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

... 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.

I meant the strata above the G.U. I guess I have to call it the Paleozoic rocks.

I thought your evidence had to do with proving that the faults and formation of the G.U. preceded the laying down of the Paleozoic rocks, disproving my scenario in which they were already all there and all lifted at once.

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.

Yes and I used the point myself in this thread somewhere. Thanks for the clarification.

But now I'm not sure which faults you are talking about.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Nature and Scripture are both divine revelations of truth and are thus on an "equal footing" in terms of revealing truth. But they reveal very different things. To paraphrase Galileo, the Bible reveals how to go to heaven, while nature reveals how the heavens go.

The written word can actually reveal things directly -- that's what "revelation" means. Nature doesn't reveal anything to us about itself or even about God in our fallen condition, it's utterly opaque to us normally, and science is the only method that can interpret it. And then it took millennia before science even developed as a useful tool and centuries after that for it to reveal anything consistently trustworthy. Nature may be on an equal footing as far as its being Gods work goes, but we can't read it at all as we can read God's written word.

You say you aren't denying Genesis, just the YEC interpretation of Genesis. But that can only mean you accept one of the interpretations that allows for evolution and the old earth -- the "gap" theory or some such? As I said, evolution requires death before the Fall, that's a direct contradiction of scripture and if you accept it you are contradicting the Bible, not just a human interpretation of the Bible. The Old Earth is also a contradiction, especially since it justifies the idea of evolution, but also because there is no way to compute the Old Earth from scripture itself, again contradicting not just a human interpretation but scripture itself.

If death preceded the Fall then death is natural and not a corruption of life due to sin. Why do we need a Savior from something that's natural and inevitable? He came to save us from sin which is a violation of God's law and from death which is a violation of nature brought about by sin. I don't see any way you can shoehorn in either of these theories without doing violence to God's word and to the gospel.

And

I meant the strata above the G.U. I guess I have to call it the Paleozoic rocks. The unconformity truncates those faults in the upward direction. The unconformity then post dates those faults and, by superposition, the Paleozoic System post dates the unconformity.

I still don't know what faults you are talking about but I'm not sure it matters.

However, if the Paleozoic strata post-date the G.U. simply by superposition, that is, simply because it's beneath the Paleozoic system, that refers well enough to the strata the G.U. is composed of, all that being already there before the Paleozoic layers were formed, but it really doesn't prove that the unconformity itself, the tilted blocks of strata, formed before the Paleozoic system did. Unless I'm missing something in what you're saying. Surely it's not uncommon for there to be underground movements of rock that in themselves predate upper rock, while the movement and repositioning of the lower rock are then more recent than the upper rock. Earthquakes reflect such underground shifts, right?

I thought your evidence had to do with proving that the faults and formation of the G.U. preceded the laying down of the Paleozoic rocks. That is the unmistakable conclusion.

Except for what I say above. Unless, again, I'm missing something in what you said.

Yes and I used the point myself in this thread somewhere. Thanks for the clarification. Then you have to agree that the faults which bound and preserve the GC Supergroup are older than the unconformity.

That doesn't seem to be a problem although I still don't know what faults you are talking about, and I don't understand what you mean by "bound and preserve the Supergroup."

But now I'm not sure which faults you are talking about. As I said, the ones that allow the GC Supergroup rocks to be preserved in down-dropped blocks. That faulting was clearly over by the time the Tapeats was deposited on the unconformity.

I don't see faults on most of the cross sections and still don't know what you are referring to. I also don't know what you mean by "allow the GC Supergroup rocks to be preserved in down-dropped blocks." I have to guess that the blocks are considered to have been lowered as mentioned before but I don't know why this is thought, what the evidence is, or what the implications are of this down-dropping. Or how the faulting relates to it and "preserves" it.

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. Faith, you never fail to entertain. It is clear to everyone else here that no matter where the uplift occurred, the unconformity would be right underneath it.

Then I guess I'm the dunderheaded exception, but I don't get it except on the scenario I've given which you disagree with. To have to be right underneath the uplift means it has to be related to the uplift somehow, but unless it was also affected in the uplift as I'm suggesting it was, then I don't see how you would regard it as anything but a completely random or accidental fact that it happens to be right beneath the uplift.

Your observation is only relevant to this discussion because you say that it is.

???

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

Just a guess of mine that seemed logical. But perhaps some time you could give some kind of account of the Great Unconformity as it is found in other places besides the GC? That would be very interesting.

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, ... Heh, heh, heh, ... This is silly. So, you've got the post Permian rocks and the Precambrian rocks so strained that they are eroded away or highly sheared, and yet nothing happened to all of the rocks in between.

Let me get something clear: you aren't denying that there WAS such a stack of post Permian rocks above the canyon area?

Do you also accept that the post-Permian rocks were severely eroded, forming the Grand Staircase and scouring off the Kaibab plateau?

Are you being serious here?

Very. If all that post-Permian rock could have been so catastrophically eroded as we can see on that main cross section of the area, what's the problem with the possibility that the uplift put strain on the upper layers of that rock? At two miles above the Permian those uppermost strata would be stretched a great deal by such an uplift. This doesn't seem reasonable to you?

... 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. It is a joke. It is a self-refuting fantasy.

Seems quite reasonable to me. The strain is reasonable to begin with, and the breaking up of the upper strata is reasonable based on the strain which would stretch and crack the sediments. If it did all occur in the receding phase of the Flood you then have a lot of water as the mechanism for producing all that very visible erosion, including very likely the Grand Canyon itself.

Perhaps you are just so used to thinking in terms of slow processes this hits you as too alien to consider?

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. What were the dynamics of this 'Force'? When did gentle warps begin to generate the kind of strain you are talking about, that didn't affect the entire Paleozoic section?

Well, first of all, you too believe the uplift occurred after all the strata were in place, correct? That suggests that you believe it possible for the strata to have remained intact through that uplift since it clearly IS intact. Now perhaps you think that's because it occurred more gently and slowly than I have in mind? Actually even if it did, ultimately the upper strata so high above the Permian would have had to undergo strain from being stretched more than the lower strata.

I think the immense weight of all the strata would have held it together by compressing it when the uplift occurred due to tectonic force from beneath. It wouldn't have had to be abrupt but it would have had to be extremely powerful, pushing up the entire stack three miles deep. The continuous relentless pushing of a continental collision seems powerful enough and not necessarily abrupt, adequate to the scenario I have in mind. I'm not imagining anything particularly abrupt or violent, just powerful enough pressure to push the strata of the Supergroup into an unconformity and raise the whole stack of strata above.

I'm going to have to break off answering this post and come back to it.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Continuing my response to Message 76

Seems to be what everybody is saying, how the GU eroded flat and that created the surface for the strata to buld on. Except that it was not entirely flat, as I explained earlier.

The problem I see is that I don't see how such an upthrust piece of hardened strata could erode away to flatness. Some were not completely eroded. This is evident in your own sections.

Yes, it's really not very eroded at all considering its supposed history of being the root of a mountain and then subjected to millions of years of weathering. It’s lumpy and bumpy but still manages an overall appearance of horizontal flatness. Like if you scattered some gravel on a tabletop and then plunked down a flat piece of wet clay on top of it. The gravel would bite into the clay but the overall appearance would be of one horizontal object on top of another. Looking at the cross sections you see wavy lines indicating erosion between the G.U. and the Tapeats, but it's just a wavy line. I guess I'm arguing from incredulity here but I just can't see how that small degree of erosion, leaving a relatively horizontal flat surface, could have been the result of the processes Geology says it went through.

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..." The point is that whatever cause deformation of the GC Supergroup and eruption of the Cardenas Basalt did not affect the youngest rocks.

Which youngest rocks though? The layers in the Supergroup that didn't get metamorphosed, or the Paleozoic strata above?

If you mean the rocks in the Supergroup I have a question about that too. Did you ever explain how a quartzite layer got sandwiched in there among sedimentary layers? You many have, but I don't remember. Also the Cardenas basalt is odd to find as a layer in that group.

Here's the question: How is it that this block of strata, which was supposedly the root of a mountain or mountains, which I would think would have subjected it to a great deal of pressure, didn't ALL become metamorphic rock?

Uh yeah, that's the point of my argument that it wouldn't have eroded flat. And it didn't. However, I know of no law that forbids that. And there is plenty of time, your denial notwithstanding. There is actual hard evidence of long ages, all in opposition to your a priori beliefs. So, what is your point?

I remarked on this above, but why not again. Considering degrees of flatness: On all the cross sections of the GC the Paleozoic layers all sit quite firmly on a very horizontal platform composed of the eroded surface of a huge block of the diagonally upthrust layers of the Great Unconformity. Now the surface of that horizontal platform may be pretty lumpy in places, but nevertheless it IS quite horizontal and relatively flat and the strata seated on it aren’t distorted by it beyond some visible but not very demanding accommodation to the small amount of lumpiness.

That surface manages to be, to my mind, surprisingly horizontal and surprisingly relatively flat considering its supposed history on the surface of the earth being eroded down to this condition. How the eroding factors were able to reach a horizontal platform at all, even a lumpy one, with such a spiky collection of upthrust strata of different kinds and hardnesses of rock, strikes me as inexplicable – no, impossible. Why flatness to any degree at all, why horizontality to any degree at all? Such a motley block of strata could have eroded into a spiky diagonal, with the softer rock eroded farther back than the harder rock.

But I know your answer: Anything is possible in millions of years, including eroding upthrust huge spiky strata down to flatness.

I have another question too, although it's not very clear in my mind. I keep wondering about the Vishnu schist that the Supergroup seems to have built on. How come it fills up the space to one side of the G.U., in effect displacing the G.U. or the strata that was made into the G.U. that can't be found any more? and forms the surface the Tapeats then built on? I'd guess it must have gotten pushed up in the uplift along with the Supergroup but of course you disagree.

I assume the granite in the schist represents magma from below. It's got magma type "fingers" pushing up into the schist. Certainly the source of the heat that helped form the schist. As for the pressure, it's too old to have been formed in the uplift you say?

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sorry, to resolve a conflict between science and the Bible you don't choose in favor of science and make the Bible conform to it. That's a kind of dishonesty.

Edge, maybe it's because Faith thinks that the Precambrian is a "layer" of rocks, the Cambrian is is a "layer" of rocks, etc.? One stacked up upon each other? That's what creationists tell them what the geological periods are? Maybe Faith has been taught that unconformities are "rock layers"? Hence, the "upper" of an unconformity. Crazy, I know. But that's what they believe.

For your information, I was taught NOTHING about these things. I SEE what look like strata in the Supergroup. They look like strata and they are composed of the very same kinds of sediments all the strata are composed of. And despite what edge is saying, SOMEBODY back in this thread DID say it was composed of strata. It's not only me.

Faith has explicitly declared that her intrepretation of the Bible is infallible.

I would never have said that. Please find where I supposedly said such a thing or you are guilty of slander.

Nature doesn't reveal anything to us about itself or even about God in our fallen condition, it's utterly opaque to us normally, and science is the only method that can interpret it. Really? Then why does Paul say that nature reveals truths about God so plainly and so clearly that fallen man is without excuse for rejecting God (Rom 1:18-20)? What you say above disagrees with Paul!

Yes, I agree about this, but in actual fact I don't know anybody who sees God in Nature except people who already believe. So presumably that means we SHOULD see Him but our fallenness prevents it or leads us to deny what is there. In any case it's hardly on the order of something being actually revealed to us.

If death preceded the Fall then death is natural and not a corruption of life due to sin. Why do we need a Savior from something that's natural and inevitable? He came to save us from sin which is a violation of God's law and from death which is a violation of nature brought about by sin. I believe that death of animals is indeed natural. They don't sin so they don't need a Savior. Death only of man is a consequence of sin (Rom 5:12ff).

Yes I've had this discussion with others. No point in getting too deep into it. But God brought them under the curse for our sake which suggests they weren't subject to death naturally, and shouldn't have been because they can't sin; and "all creation groans for its liberation."

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

If this is what you mean, there is no evidence that anything like this ever happened.

I know it never happened. The point is that it WOULD have happened and since it didn't it proves my point. But what seemed so clear to me when I wrote that post doesn't seem so clear any more. Maybe it will come back to me.

The Vishnu Schist adjacent to the supergroup layers were already there when the supergroup layers were deposited. When the stretching of the continent caused all the faulting that formed the blocks of basin and range then the lowest supergroup layers slipped to be adjacent to older Vishnu Schist layers. What we see in the region of the Grand Canyon you're looking at is just the very lowest and oldest layers of the supergroup.

Edge is now saying that the Supergroup is NOT composed of layers as you seem to be saying it is, and I thought it was.

At least this is some kind of explanation how they got in the position they're in. But the Supergroup should have originally been as long as any of the strata, IF composed of strata I guess, and there's still a question how there was room for the Vishnu to displace it if it was originally like the other strata in length.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You seem to be having a conniption fit of some sort in this post, Message 91, and I don't think I'm up to it right now.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

In the Vanrhynsdorp Group in my country and the Nama Group in Namibia there's absolutely no geological unconformity found in the "rocks" between the Precambrian Namibian Era and the Cambrian period. Those sedimentary rocks straddle the boundary between the Precambrian and the Cambrian Period. No unconformity between Cambrian and Precambrian found there. Blows magic global floods during that time out of the water.

Boy are you confused! The unconformity is a huge headache for the Flood, why do you think I'm spending time on it?

But the Great Unconformity IS the Supergroup, tilted and broken. If the Supergroup is composed of strata, so is the G.U.

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. OK, for the most part yes, this seems to be true. The forces that caused the Kaibab plateau uplift appear to be a fairly recent phenomenon and the sediment at least up to the Kalibab were in place before the uplift.

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.

Reading this now it strikes me as very odd and I'm not sure what on earth I had in mind. Now it just seems that the G.U. was pushed up along with the strata, it would have been lower when they were laid down over it. I'm waiting to see if I saw something then that I need to recapture but at the moment it just looks wrong.

HBD writes: First of all, an unconformity represents a "missing" segment of time - which I understand you don't accept. I think you do understand what it means, but you worded the above kind of strangely saying that if the unconformity existed before the strata above it was laid down that it would butt into it (the unconformity). What we need to look at is the layers above and below the unconformity and see how they interact.

No, I just need to rethink it and I'll probably just conclude I wasn't thinking clearly at the time. But I was so sure of it I have to give myself time to see if it comes back the way I originally saw it.

As for an unconformity representing a missing segment of time, aren't you confusing different kinds of unconformity? The kind I reject is the kind that represents an entire segment of rock that OE theory says is supposed to be there but isn't.

But where I say the G.U. didn't preexist the laying down of the strata I may have confused you because in its pre-tilted condition, when it was just a stack of layers, it would certainly have pre-existed the laying down of the Paleozoic strata. But the G.U. is the tilted formation that formed from it, which I claim didn't pre-exist the laying down of the strata but was created by the Kaibab Uplift. The rock was already there, but not the unconformity, until the uplift.

I thought I'd proved this but now I'm not seeing my line of reasoning. As I said, I'm going to have to give it time to see if I've just lost a necessary perspective in the blizzard of debate that will come back to me when my brain settles down.

As for your proofs, they are very much the standard view, though maybe I'm not giving them enough attention at the moment. The only thing that's really different is that you have brought out the interesting fact that some of the "monadnocks" penetrated very deeply into the strata above. This is something I'd wondered about and mentioned in my previous post to edge. Nevertheless, despite the presence of these dramatic pieces of rock, the overall presentation of the surface of the G.U. where it contacts the Tapeats, is still a lot more flat and horizontal than I would expect. Of course my expectations are worth nothing, but it's where I'm starting.

Accusing me of "forcing" anything is not fair. I do my best to understand the actual lay of the rocks and how it all fits together.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

All right, this needs a lot of clarification. The angular unconformity at Siccar Point is the entire formation that includes both the upper horizontal layer and the vertical layers beneath. This is how I've been regarding the physical presentation of the Great Unconformity as well. To reduce it merely to the eroded contact line makes no sense to me.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.