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

Oh absolute screaming nonsense. What this is after all is just the Old Earth theory of what happened to the Supergroup, those phantom millions of years of mountain building followed by erosion, interfering with my attempt to argue an entirely different explanation for the tilted Supergroup and its contact with the Tapeats. Any other view of it, such as my own, has just been handily defined away. Ha ha.

From jar's post above:

The Great Unconformity is just one of the literally tens of thousands of evidences that the Earth is old.

Actually what it is, is pure theory reified into fact, the fantasy castle built out of mental cobwebs. Emperor's New Clothes. Flimflam.

I need a break.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I couldn't possibly claim that I understand the Bible infallibly, I'm sure you've misconstrued something.

jar, I don't know where you are getting the "two vertical miles" of missing sediments.

Thanks for posting that cross section. I've seen it a million times without noticing that the G.U. was identified as the contact line.

I still don't know what faults you are talking about but I'm not sure it matters. The ones the between the Supergroup and the Vishnu sequence.

Oh that are indicated along the edge of the Supergroup. Now I see it.

However, if the Paleozoic strata post-date the G.U. simply by superposition, ... Okay, so refute the principle of superposition.

No such intention.

... that is, simply because it's beneath the Paleozoic system, that refers well enough to the strata the G.U. is composed of, The Great Unconformity is not composed of strata!!!!!!!!!

OK I guess I now know what you mean by this after recent discussions. The G.U. is apparently just the eroded contact between the Supergroup and the Tonto group. OK? I had been thinking of it as the Supergroup itself broken and tilted.

Please read our posts.

This time around I've been very consistent about reading all the posts. Well, all YOUR posts anyway and most of the others too. Apparently I've managed to hold onto a different idea of the G.U. nevertheless.

... 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.

Here you can see I mean the whole Supergroup as the G.U.

You are missing everything in what I'm saying. If you are going to cut a stratum with a fault, the stratum has to be there in the first place. If you are going to overlay one bed with another that bed has to be there in the first place. If an erosional surface truncates a fault, that fault has to be there in the first place. This is not rocket science...

Maybe the point can be recovered, but probably not right now.

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? Hunh? So, the faults only affect certain rocks? Where do you get this stuff? No. An earthquake affects all rocks that the fault line intersects. If the rocks are younger than the earthquake are not broken by the fault.

Going to have to come back to this topic when the whole misunderstanding is clearer.

Nothing you've said gets across anything about the missing two miles of rock. Don't know what you mean. That diagram you posted was already posted by Asgara and I've seen it many times already anyway.

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, Yes, it is related in space. There is no genetic relationship. This is a major logical fallacy.

Just a completely random accidental position, not even a bit off center, not outside the uplift area at all. So OK, that's your opinion.

... 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. When you have a global phenomenon, the fact that something else is occasionally found with it is insignificant. I can see that logic is not your strong point.

Seems a bit more significant than that to me, but I've registered your opinion.

Have you not heard of Siccar Point?

I've spent a lot of time analyzing Siccar Point. It's where I came up with my idea about how angular unconformities developed by tectonic force that left upper strata intact over folded lower strata. Which of course you find ridiculous.

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? I have no problem with that.

Great. Something we can agree on.

Very. If all that post-Permian rock could have been so catastrophically eroded ... Who says it was catastrophic? There was certainly plenty of time for the erosion to occur.

Well the word is at least descriptive of the enormous amount of sediment that was disposed of. But of course I do think it was catastrophically disposed of too, in the receding stage of the Flood. Of course I'm aware you think it took a long time.

... 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? The fact that the rocks immediately beneath them are not so strained argues against your point. This was not a major strain event.

I don't think you are picturing what I was trying to get across. I'm talking about the uppermost layers at the very top of the post-Permian strata that were two miles higher than the Kaibab. You can't see "the rocks immediately beneath them" because that entire stack down to the Permian is gone. By strain I mean strain on the surface of the uppermost layers, from the stretching that would occur at that height over the rounded shape of the uplift and could make cracks in the highest layers. I'm of course not thinking of the uplift taking any great length of time but I would think even if it did take a long time the upper layers would get stretched and crack. n The layers WAY up there.

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? No. In that case why (in your scenario) are the Precambrian rocks so deformed? Do you know the types of strain that would happen in a broad upwarp such as the Kaibab?

Your question doesn't make sense to me. I think you didn't understand what I was saying and mean something different by "strain."

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. But what does this have to do with the Precambrian rocks?

Nothing except that I'm thinking of the uplift as causing both the strain at the uppermost levels above, beginning the massive erosion of that area, and the tilting of the Supergroup beneath the canyon. Same uplift, two different effects, one above, one below.

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. Where is the evience for this 'lot of water'?

Well it all looks to me like it "washed away," especially the surface of the Kaibab but also the way the cliffs of the Grand Staircase broke up as they did. Also of course I figure a huge amount of water was responsible for a great deal of the carving out of the Grand Canyon. Water could do such things. Don't know what you'd consider evidence though.

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

Always nice to figure out what you think.

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. Please prove this with some math. You are making a wishful assertion here. It does however, avoid the point that this uplift is not the only tectonic event presented in the GC rocks. It is another red herring.

This is a sort of thing to be visualized not calculated. Also, no avoidance going on, I simply believe there was only one major tectonic event that caused the Kaibab Uplift and all that massive erosion above the Permian, and the tilting of the Supergroup beneath the canyon.

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. Probably not. But still irrelevant.

Irrelevant to what? Apparently I'm not addressing whatever you think the subject is. But I thought I was answering the question how the Paleozoic rocks managed not to be disturbed while the post-Permian strata were getting broken up and the Supergroup was being tilted.

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. Actually, there is no reason for it to be abrupt. Neither is it extremely powerful compared to other tectonic events in the history of the earth.

OK. That fact too would contribute to the preservation of the Paleozoic stack of strata. Had to be just powerful enough to tilt the Supergroup and lift a three-mile stack of strata.

The continuous relentless pushing of a continental collision seems powerful enough and not necessarily abrupt, adequate to the scenario I have in mind. It's hard to tell what you have in mind. Please describe these forces in magnitude direction and source.

I'd have to find all that out from you.

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. What do you mean 'push the strata into an unconformity'. That is a meaningless statement and there is no evidence that there has been any such deformation, particularly on a global scale.

I don't get this global scale thing. I consider it local. and now that I know the unconformity isn't the Supergroup but the contact line above the tilted supergroup I will avoid such language in future. What I meant was "enough pressure to tilt the Supergroup and raise the whole stack of strata above. "

I've always regarded an angular unconformity as comprising the entire physical unit of upper horizontal and lower folded strata. The idea that only the "missing" time is included in the definition is new to me. And I actually suspect that's not always the case.

I'm giving up on this thread at this point. I've concluded I didn't have the OP thought out and don't have the evidence I thought I had. Thanks.

Kbertsche: I believe I owe you an apology. Although I disagree with your view that death was natural for animals, since I believe that death is death and there was no death at all before the Fall, I discovered that even Martin Luther held this view. Of course I disagree with him too, but it's certainly clear it wasn't an idea invented to accommodate to the Old Earth, which didn't exist in his time.

So I'm sorry for accusing you of avoiding persecution and leaving other Christians in the lurch.

You really should provide some quotes in evidence for all that.

But the really odd thing is that you have Martin Luther holding the creationist view he actually didn't hold, since he and kbertsche agree on death being natural to animals.

And I still haven't seen the basis for the idea of two miles of missing rock -- assertions galore notwithstanding -- so I have no idea whether it lies or not.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I didn't say he wasn't a creationist, what I said was that he shares KB's belief that it was natural for animals to die before the Fall, which makes him a different kind of creationist than the kind ThinAir was describing.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Interesting that they believed all that.

Calvin is a bit harder to figure out. He seems to have been more open to science than Luther. He frequently noted in his commentaries that biblical language was "accommodated" to human understanding; God could only communicate with mankind in what was essentially an over-simplified "baby-talk", which should not be read more literally than intended.

Did Calvin use wording that is fairly understood to mean "baby talk?" The idea that "biblical language was accommodated to human understanding" is a pretty standard idea, not particularly Calvinistic, though any implication that it was mainly geared to pre-scientific humanity is awfully self-centered of modern man. None of us, then or now, can grasp the realities of God, we can only grasp them through language that reflects our own earthly experience. This is the wisdom and mercy and graciousness of God to us that He gives us a way to understand Him from our own point of view, not JUST the point of view of an ancient nomadic culture but ALL cultures in all time. One of the things we can look forward to as we continue in the Christian life is beginning to understand some really amazing things about the nature of God.

Calvin apparently held the generally-accepted Ptolemaic astronomy rather than the newer, controversial Copernican system, but he didn't make a huge issue of this.

Well, the Reformers were all originally Catholics, steeped in Catholic theology, and Catholic astronomy came from Ptolemy rather than the Bible. It took a while for some of the Catholic legacy to be thoroughly subjected to the Reformers' critical eye, which they addressed more pointedly to their most important theological disagreement with Rome, salvation by grace alone through faith alone.

In any case, Biblical language about the movements of the planets is simply written from our own point of view, which we all naturally use still and will never stop using because that's how we experience it: the sun RISES AND SETS. There is nothing false about this although we understand the actual movements from Copernicus.

HOWEVER, this is all off topic in this thread.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

True, I don't want to resume it so I suppose its being off topic shouldn't matter. My mistake.

ABE: ON THE OTHER HAND, does my not wanting to continue the topic of the OP preclude me from responding to the off-topic posts?

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.