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

On the other hand, other some verses clearly do imply a view point. When the Bible says that the passage of a day was halted by commanding the sun to stop, there is an open question about whether the expression describes a misunderstanding on the part of the Biblical author or whether we can take it as poetic license.

I'd say it's neither of those, but what I said already: describing the event from the physical perspective of earth, the way WE would see if it happened today as well. It's not a scientific or analytic statement, it's purely descriptive.

I don't think any of the Biblical descriptions can be called "geocentrism" even if that's what people made of it in the early scientific age. It's just a perfectly natural description from the point of view of earthlings.

It is important to say that the Ptolemaic view was the official position of the Roman church because it shouldn't have been. Ptolemy and Aristotle, who also inspired way too much of their theology, are pagan thinkers they allowed to eclipse a strictly Biblical world view. Calvin and Luther also should have known better, but as I said, they too had been steeped in Catholicism. As for Copernicus, he was as much a rebel from Romanism as the Reformers. There were quite a few of those down the centuries who nevertheless didn't break with the RCC as the Reformers finally did.

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Huh?

Actually you are wrong. The difference between stopping the sun from rotating around the earth, and stopping the earth from rotating on its axis produce different results that would easily be distinguished on earth; at least the could be distingushed by people with an understanding of physics.

Which neither the ancients had, nor 99% of humanity after them. Hardly anyone even through our own time had enough scientific knowledge to apply to the situation.

If the Bible is merely describing what happened, "the sun stopped moving" is quite sufficient without knowing whether the sun itself stopped or the earth's rotation stopped. There wouldn't be different results because God is doing this and there's no way to know how He did it. He's not going to stop the earth and let us all fly off into space, so what He did remains a mystery.

The Biblical description of the event is only equivalent to reality if those differences are ignored.

Disagree. There's no reason for the Bible to give any more than a description of the sun's apparently stopping its movement from the point of view of human beings on earth. HOW is really a completely different issue.

In short, it is pretty clear that the underlying picture of the universe expressed by the writer's was completely wrong.

If they had a scientific view of it at all. which there is no way to know, then it would probably have been geocentrism, but there is NO reason to think that level of thought applies to the Biblical descriptions at all.

If everyone actually knew better at the time, then there would be no harm in expressing what actually happened.

But nobody thinks "everybody actually knew better at the time." GOD of course knew and He is the inspirer of the writings, but He has no reason to give us more than a simple description.

Ptolemy and Aristotle, who also inspired way too much of their theology, are pagan thinkers they allowed to eclipse a strictly Biblical world view. Calvin and Luther also should have known better, but as I said, they too had been steeped in Catholicism. Faith, what you write above is complete revisionist nonsense. First, there is no information in the Bible that would assist you in avoiding a geocentric view of the solar system.

So what? I'm not claiming there is. The point is only that if the Bible's descriptions were recognized as merely descriptions and not scientific information, heliocentrism would have been a lot easier to defend.

Accordingly, there is nothing Christian about the correct view nor is there anything particularly pagan about Ptolemy's view. To the contrary, there are plenty of hints in scripture that might well be interpreted as geocentric. Is it really pagan that scientific interpretations were rejected?

You are imputing WAY too much to the word "pagan," all it means is philosophies from outside the Bible. Ptolemy and Aristotle simply WERE literally pagans by that standard and their thinking was not biblical. The problem is that once the RCC put a pagan philosopher's thinking OVER the Bible, which they did with both Ptolemy and Aristotle, then someone like Copernicus or Galileo couldn't argue as easily for heliocentrism which DOESN'T CONTRADICT the Bible if you understand it as purely descriptive and not analytic.

Don't you reject scientific interpretations of how the grand canyon was formed despite the fact that the Bible does not provide any testimony on the subject? Is that somehow pagan?

Again you are misunderstanding my use of the term "pagan." However, I might argue that the current science about the canyon IS pagan, wrongly imposed on the Bible just as Ptolemy's system was, and my objective is to try to make a case for how it could all have come about in a way that doesn't contradict the young earth.

And where did the correction away from geocentric thinking come from? Largely from Catholics and ex-Catholics.

Yes and so did the Reformers come out of Catholicism. The main problem with the RCC is the papacy, and the official teachings that contradict the Bible, but there were always members of the RCC who relied on the Bible more than all that. That's how the Reformers got inspired after all.

As for Copernicus, he was as much a rebel from Romanism as the Reformers. Cough. Cough. Evidence please.

All I meant was that he was a rebel against the Ptolemaic assumptions held by the RCC over the Bible, which I'd already said.

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All I meant was that he was a rebel against the Ptolemaic assumptions held by the RCC over the Bible, which I'd already said Ridiculous. The Protestants were no less geocentric than Catholics and the Bible does not dispute geocentric view points in any way.

Sigh. I'm beginning to think of you as the Master of the Non Sequitur. Saying that Copernicus was a rebel against the Ptolemaic assumptions of the RCC over the Bible does NOT imply that the Protestant Reformers were not geocentric. And they were rebels against the RCC too, in a different way.

The few geocentrists you find around today are Protestants and Catholics who consider themselves to be Bible fundamentalists.

Yeh, so?

So if the Bible is so heliocentric as you make it out to be, why wouldn't other "true Bible believers" also see that simple fact? So why would these extant geocentrists who are also "true Bible believers" who base their geocentrism on the Bible not be heliocentrists instead?

I didn't say the Bible was heliocentric. I said it takes a purely descriptive view of the heavenlies. It doesn't make scientific or analytic statements it simply describes things as we see them. Since it is from our point of view, the most natural scientific view would be geocentrism if you insist on trying to get a scientific view out of it, but why do that since the Bible itself doesn't?

My argument has been that if the RCC hadn't brought Ptolemy's science into its official doctrine there would have been no need for a dispute with Copernicus or Galileo, because the Bible is not intended as a scientific presentation and nothing it says, which is strictly descriptive from our point of view, contradicts a heliocentric interpretation of the heavenlies. I think the whole problem has to do with treating the Bible's simple observations as if they were scientific.

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Yes, amen. But while that's true of the Bible's descriptions of the heavens, it's not true of its statements about the creation of life and the age of the earth, which limit science to those statements.

Genesis 1 was not written solely for people with knowledge of modern astronomy or cosmology. Genesis 1 was written by and originally for people with an ancient Middle Eastern geocentric cosmology.

Genesis, like all the Bible, was written for all people in all times in all cultures with all degrees of knowledge about everything.

In relation to the cultures of its day it was written mostly as an answer to the idolatrous religions of all the different peoples, which it answers with a flat declaration of the one true God as Creator of everything. Cosmology is a very very small part of its concern.

Genesis 1 is strongly consistent with ancient Middle Eastern cosmology.

Genesis 1 has very little interest in cosmology at all.

It begins with the Primordial Ocean. It lacks any concept of the Earth as a planet, seeing it as a few areas of dry land, set in the Ocean. It lacks even the idea that the moon only reflects light from the sun.

None of this is about cosmology, or any particular culture's point of view, it's about how God created everything.

If Genesis 1 is intended to communicate accurate information about the physical universe or even how it was created it does rather a poor job of it.

I'll let the Creator know your objections to His work. But again cosmology is not of any importance in Genesis 1.

Why, then, should anyone assume that Genesis 1 was intended by God to convey information about the physical universe at all ?

Because it's God's Word and whatever it says about the physical universe is true. But I don't think it has ANY aim at providing a scientific description of anything whatever.

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The metamorphism of the schist require heat and high pressure. The non-metamorphism of the overlying sediments requires the lack of heat and high pressure. The sediments were not there when the schist metamorphism happened.

In my scenario they were and there is no reason to suppose the intense heat reached to that level, especially if the entire region was soaked in Flood water as I hypothesize that it was. The blocks of tilted Supergroup also weren't metamorphosed, I assume for the same reason, but I still think the Vishnu contains the rubble from the Supergroup that is no longer in evidence AS Supergroup. Oddly, one of the layers of the Supergroup is metamorphosed, the Shinumo quartzite. Enough heat and pressure for that without affecting the others? I don't know but that's the lines I'm thinking along.

http://en.wikipedia.org/...shnu_Basement_Rocks#Upper_contact:

The upper contact of the Vishnu Basement Rocks is a major unconformity between it and either the Tonto Group or Unkar Group that resulted from uplift and the deep erosion, by at least 25 kilometres (16 mi), of the Vishnu Basement Rocks and any overlying strata.

Am I reading this right? Is this talking about erosion caused by the abrasion between lower and upper rocks?

And that unconformity is a nonconformity - It is sediments on top of basement metamorphics and intrusives.

So, on top of the basement metamorphics and intrusives the contact with the sedimentary strata is a nonconformity, but on top of the tilted Supergroup it's an angular unconformity? Is that the idea?

But, pressure means deep burial. Per my interpretation of the above quoted, what became the Vishnu Schist was once buried under approximately 25 kilometers of other material (The summit of Mt. Everest is about 9 kilometers above sea level). Perhaps that interpretation is wrong. But if so, that means that 25 kilometers of material was eroded off before the deposition of any of the currently overlying sediments.

How would that compare with my Young Earth interpretation of three miles (about 5 km?) of sedimentary layers burying the Vishnu as it formed into schist. On this scenario only the upper two miles of that strata were then eroded away as the canyon was cut and the Grand Staircase as well. Three miles of sedimentary weight not enough "deep burial" to form schist?

Before I researched this a bit, my WAG (wild-ass-guess) was that at least 10 kilometers of burial was required for the metamorphism to happen. That's still an Everest height of sediment that had to have been eroded off, before the depostion of the Unkar Group. And that takes time, and that's before any of the sediments were deposited, which requires more time. Not going to happen in 6-10,000 years.

Unless it's all soaking in a handy-dandy worldwide Flood that then recedes, washing away a two-mile depth of those upper strata as described above. That shouldn't take more than a few months, with then some years after that to lithify the strata into rock etc. Meanwhile the Vishnu should have become schist under all that pressure plus the heat from the magma beneath, IMHO.

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Not to worry, it will all fit together eventually.

Just this for now:

The schists etc. structures and compositions (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vishnu_Basement_Rocks) are not compatible with a Supergroup protolith (pre-metamorphism form).

So some say. I'll have to look it up again but one source who studied the Vishnu says it is made up of a huge range of different rocks. I ran across this earlier and mentioned it in one of these recent threads, guess I'll have to find it.

Re: Shinumo Quartzite - Unfortunately, that name does not require metamophism. It means that the quartz sandstone is so well silica cemented that the rock can break through the sand grains, rather than just between the grains. Besides, you're not going to get metamorphism there, without also getting metaphophism in the neighboring sediments.

Not at all unfortunate. It would solve the puzzle if you were right but everything I've found calls it a metamorphic rock requiring heat and pressure, such as this Google page:

Quartzite (from German: Quarzit) is a hard, non-foliated metamorphic rock which was originally pure quartz sandstone. Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tectonic compression within orogenic belts

Its presence between nonmetamorphic rocks needs another explanation apparently.

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In all your ponderings about the Great Unconformity, how long the erosion of the lower surface took etc., why is it that the relative flatness of that surface, where it comes in contact with the strata above, is taken so for granted?

I've brought this up many times and all I get is basically Why not? or I see no problem, or That's the way it is as if I'm asking an unreasonable question. But it doesn't matter how many millions or billions of years of erosion were involved there is no way to get such a flattish surface at the top of a lumpy bunch of schist or granite or folded strata.

But in image after image we see the strata above laid down FLAT on these lumpy rocks, so the surface did have to be flattish. There would be no problem if we were talking about the surface of a mesa or butte or tepui, those are flat because the rock itself is flat or the exposed surface is flat. But on top of lumpy Vishnu or uptilted strata, no. Yes we see in some places that the harder rock, such as the quartzite, makes the surface irregular, and there are plenty of examples of less than perfect flatness that can be found, but still, look at the contact line in spite of those irregularities: overall it's flat / straight / horizontal. Flattish. Straightish. Then there are the cross sections, which are of course schematic, but why would anyone draw such inexorably straight lines if they didn't represent the reality well enough to justify it?

So I've picked some examples that are of course familiar just so you'll know what I'm talking about. How-how-how could "erosion" of any type or length of time create such a flat surface? And, one might also ask, why did "erosion" stop where it did at that particular level? Why didn't it just keep on eroding downward, or create this flat surface at some other level?

PLEASE. Erosion CANNOT be the explanation for this flatness.

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OK, I'm very happy to know that the problem has been solved, and Shinumo quartzite is not metamorphic. One less problem to worry about.

You do NOT "understand [my] concern here!"

Can you think of an example in our contemporary setting where the surface of the earth that is exposed to erosion is "flat?"

Only on the top of a mesa or butte or tepui as I already said, or on a single-sediment deposit such as the great salt lake, or where the surface of a rock layer was washed clean and exposed, such as the Kaibab in the GC area. WHERE THE ROCK IS ALREADY NATURALLY FLAT! OTHERWISE NO! And neither can you! PLEASE stop treating me like a child and think about the point I'm making!

FLAT is defined by the pictures I've posted.

Remember that image that we went round and round about in the other thread (the one where you said it looks like the rock were lifted out of the Vishnu)? Remember how you said it doesn't look like it had even been subjected to erosion? And I pointed out that even though it may not "look like" it had been eroded, we knew for sure it was eroded. Sometimes our expectations of what geological features should "look like" is pretty subjective.

IT DID NOT LOOK ERODED, but that is NOT the same thing as I'm talking about here. It turned out that was a vertical surface that was not at all evident on the photo we were discussing, and only a few inches of it were seen there too. And I'd ask the same question about the actual contact line there as well, which can only be seen when the whole context is included in the picture: HOW ON EARTH COULD EROSION HAVE CREATED THAT STRAIGHT FLAT HORIZONTAL CONTACT LINE?

Again, PLEASE stop talking down to me and think about the point I'm making! You have NOT addressed it, you've merely dismissed it with an irrelevant reference.

All your detail does NOT deal with such basic questions!

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As Edge said in the previous message, there's no way to shut off the metamorphism, especially that radically, at the contact. The sediments would have shown some signs of pressure and heat effects.

I would think it would depend on mitigating factors such as the presence of a cooling agent in the vicinity to retard the heat before it reaches the contact. Simple distance from the source of course already reduces its effect as it moves upward and outward.

However, I think movement between the upper and lower rocks still has to be considered an important factor. And there may be other factors yet to be considered.

From THIS SITE:

If a lava erupts into water it will cool much more quickly than if it erupts on land into the air.

And if we're talking magma released underwater so much the more quickly.

You would not go from high grade metamorphsim to little or no metamorphism at the contact that is the nonconfromity. Not even if the lower rocks were dry, and the upper rocks were water saturated.

Why do you make that distinction? ALL the rocks would have been saturated in the Flood, upper AND lower. The magma that intruded from below would have been released into soaked sediments. ABE: Surely, even if you consider the Flood to be a fantasy you can entertain such a hypothetical scenario.

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But it's not flat,

Blatant denial.

You aren't thinking about the pictures I posted.

ABE: You can bring up all kinds of exceptions, as I already acknowledged, but the problem is still how to explain the vast majority that exhibit such a flat horizontal contact -- and even the exceptions are MOSTLY flat and horizontal.

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IT SHOULDN"T BE FLAT ANYWHERE! NOT ANYWHERE! IT'S A LUMPY BUMPY POKY SPIKY IRREGULAR SURFACE. IT SHOULD NOT ERODE FLAT ANYWHERE, LET ALONE AS FLAT AS YOU CAN SEE IT IS IN THE PHOTOS I POSTED.