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

Actually, that was precisely my point. Faith was accusing all of us of not doing what we actually do all the time, while claiming that she does what she has never done: hypothetical thinking.Her most glaring omission is the total lack of testing her guesses. But, being the nice helpful people that we are we all do that testing for her. And she always reviles us for it.But even more insidious is her other omission, the lack of any knowledge of physics or of geology which causes all her guesses to be complete rubbish to begin with. Without that knowledge and understanding, her "hypotheses" (in quotes because they cannot begin to approach the loft status of real hypotheses) cannot hope to ever have any bearing on reality except through pure accident. And it is not just that she is so incredibly ignorant. She has repeatedly and explicitly refused to even consider learning anything about geology or physics. As a result, all that she can come up with is sheer nonsense.So, she falsely claims to engage in hypothetical reasoning whereas she has no clue what that even is or entails. And she accuses us of being incapable of hypothetical reasoning whereas in reality we do it all the time.It would be such a wonderful change if Faith were to learn how to engage in hypothetical reasoning. Sadly, that will never happen.

What you are saying here is that there are two obvious deformational events, of very different character and degrees of strain. There is no way to place both of these events into the same time/space frame unless you've got remarkable degree of displacement along the contact (the unconformity). We do not see this.

What it would mean is that all evidence is illusion and trickery, designed to fool people by a joker god.Including the bible.That is the logical result if you don't assume that all evidence is objective empirical evidence of reality, as science assumes, and then uses to test explanations of reality.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : pick one

Nice. Utah salt flats?Part of the problem is that normally sections we view are made by rivers cutting them, and so the sections are parallel to the river\valley, and Faith thinks that you should see the cross-section of the erosion pattern instead.

What? It doesn't look weathered by millions of years???/sarcasmOf course geologists have the advantage of being able to look at unweathered rock from fresh breaks (one of the reasons they carry those cool hammers) while pictures only show weathered surfaces, which only occurs after the rocks are exposed ... I got to use one to dig out some trilobites in Ohio during a high school field trip (which was a little difficult if I don't believe in Ohio)Enjoy

Those where actually El Mirage dry lake bed in California, but the exact same sequence happens on the salt flats year after year (or doesn't, according to Faith).The view of erosion is such a scale issue. Faith is making the mistake of zooming WAY in and looking at only a tiny portion of the erosion process. If one were to zoom into an extremely close view of those ruts in that lake bed during a rain, one would indeed see rivers cutting through the 'mountains' and depositing silt in the valleys. If one zooms out on earth to a satellite view, on can easily see the lake bed and the whole earth process are exactly the same.JB

I am not sure two tectonic events is clear to me.I see an erosional surface of gneiss.The tan unit of sandstone was laid down and tapered off into a high spot in the gneiss.The grey sandstone was laid down over that.The gneiss in the center of the image buckled upward and crushed the sandstone in that center section. It looks like the right side of the image was lifted slightly, but that could have happened at the same time as the center deformation. Other than the obvious tectonic forces that would have shaped the gneiss in the first place, what other tectonic event do you see in the image?HBD

I think this is another point that is not well understood because the Principal of Horizontality suggests that all sediment is laid down perfectly horizontally. Sediment is not laid down perfectly horizontal, but can be draped over an obstacle or [whatever you would call the opposite effect] in a basin. Michigan Basin as an example... thin towards the edges, thick in the deeper sections.HBD

I was being a little bit liberal in my definition of 'deformation' in this case. However, I'm assuming that the gneiss was deformed early, resulting in a metamorphic rock. To me that is pretty clear.Where we get into the 'uplifted' center of the photograph could possibly be deformational, but it's pretty weak. But whether deformed, or just erosion/deposition, there is definitely something happening that contradicts Faith's scenario.My opinion: it's just a 'drape fold' over a topographic high in the basement rock. It's most likely just depositional. Again, we are hampered by not being on-site.

Exactly correct. What you see on a large scale, such as in the Michigan Basin, you can also see in a local context such as in the figures from McKee that you showed earlier.I think Faith has referred to this effect in some ways, but it has been hard for me to tell what she was getting at. The problem is that this is a normal and well-understood phenomenon.

But you do not have evidence that deposition was not continuous in this formation, or those I posted earlier either, \that show the straight level contacts, because your evidence is the erosive surface and the difference between the rocks above and below. In the earlier pictures I posted nobody could find an erosive surface straight and level enough to demonstrate that it's even possible, while my view that abrasion could account for it adequately explains it. I couldn't care less if it has what you think should be the marks of abrasion or not, it's the only explanation that fits the facts. And in this current example the collapse of the strata into the "erosive surface" instead of filling in its irregularities proves the strata were already in place on a straight and level surface until that surface was disturbed, no doubt by tectonic activity. How do I know it was straight and level? Because the sagging strata ARE strata, originally straight and level strata which originally deposit horizontally, which could not have that form if they hadn't had a straight and level surface under it. So in this case, and the others in a different way, tectonic uplift DID "transform a conformable boundary into an unconformable boundary." Your pedantic definitional assertions notwithstanding, that's what the EVIDENCE here shows. These angular unconformities I've used as examples WERE formed by continuous deposition and THEN a boundary was made unconformable after they were all in place. They were never unconformities at all by your definition, that's just a misinterpretation by Geology.That's what the EVIDENCE shows. Due perhaps to my eye problems I don't see the color distinction you are referring to anywhere but between the "Precambrian Gneiss" and the strata above it, which is where the "unconformity" is. But I've explained many times why I think such a boundary probably occurs at a particular level in a stack of strata, which is that it's a point in the stack where there is a difference between the kinds of rock, so that there is enough textural difference to separate them more easily than at contacts between layers of the same kind of rock; PLUS the fact that it's the point where the weight of the stack above is just enough to resist the force of the tectonic uplift. I've accounted for this many times. In this case the facts I already pointed out: that the strata were clearly stacked horizontally on a straight level surface or they wouldn't be recognizable as strata, which I pointed out is the case, after sagging into the irregularities that NOW exist where formerly a straight level surface existed. Again, if that irregular surface already existed when they were deposited they would not sag into it as coherent formed strata but would have filled in the irregularities the way freshly depositing sediments do. Uh huh. Well, you're wrong and that is precisely what this formation demonstrates, which happens to be precisely what I've been arguing against the conventional view all along. Well I just showed you the evidence that it does. That is precisely what this example demonstrates. Too much pride to be honest about it?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

In response to HBD's diagrams in Message 970: No but most of them do look like the mounded rock beneath the strata above ("Archaean" basement beneath Tapeats) pushed up into that already-existing strata, which is evidenced by the deformation of the formerly horizontal strata over the basement rock, sagging into its depressions etc., which, as also in the other example, would not have been the case if the strata had been deposited after the lower rock was already there.Unfortunately that kind of diagram with its whiteness and thin lines is very hard on my eyes so I can't spend protracted time on them, but I think I got the basic idea and I'll come back to it again later.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What, now you are going to defy the law of gravity and the most basic law of Geology with your argument that layers can DEPOSIT nonhorizontally?No way Jose. What you are calling "draping" is clearly the sagging of originally horizontally deposited sediments while still in a soft enough condition to deform without breaking. This can only happen after they were all laid down horizontally in a stack, then they also deform as a stack. Sediments do not "drape," they deposit horizontally. The thinning at the upper parts of such a deformed stack is from stretching.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

In the interest of my education (and also in the interest of supporting assertions with evidence), could you please direct me to the resources where this "most basic law of geology" is found prohibiting layers from depositing in any manner other than horizontal.It should be super easy for you to find since it is after all "the most basic law of Geology".ThanksJB

Although I can think of exceptions to the rule, I am not attempting to do so here. The sediments were deposited very close to horizontal. Then they were compressed by all of the deposition above. This is part of lithification. Yes, they were being dewatered and lithified. I could dispute that in a subsiding basin system, but that's not relevant here.The point is that I'm not saying what you think.