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

Hi Faith,Sorry if I didn't emphasize strongly enough what I was looking for, let me try again.When I referred to something I said earlier, I meant my response to your message accusing people of a lack of imagination. I tried to make clear that while imagination is a key contributor toward developing new ideas, imagination isn't what puts something into the category of scientific knowledge. Evidence and consistency with other scientific knowledge is required.So what was missing from your responses was evidence. Rhetorically asking a question isn't evidence. The Bible is the source of your inspiration and an aid to your imagination, but it isn't evidence, or at least "the Bible says so" isn't evidence.I wasn't necessarily asking you for answers right away. If you already had evidence for these things then you would have already described it. I was just noting that you haven't yet provided supporting evidence for these things:

1. Sufficient rain can sufficiently soak landscapes to turn them into suspended sediments in flood water.
   ​
2. There were no deserts before the flood and the Earth was lush with plants.
   ​
3. There were no high mountains pre-flood, just hilly country.
   ​
4. There were no extensive plains pre-flood.

But it is! Any alternate explanation for a scientific fact or theory, no matter how implausible, creates enough doubt that one's continued belief in biblical explanations remains possible!You thought evidence mattered? Silly boy!

I know. If I understood Faith correctly (never a certainty), she thinks that only the layers just above the dropstone would be displaced above it, and that layers further above the dropstone would reform perfectly after the dropstone passed through.

Standard? Standard for whom? Based on what evidence?

Why shouldn't they? If they were contemporaneous, and all the strata were formed by the same event, they should be mixed together. If it was just blind luck that determined which organisms got lumped together in any particular spot, why would we see the consistency that we do in different geographic locales?Coragyps' question is clear and straightforward. If other organisms are found together in the same rocks, why aren't the ones he mentioned?

I'm going to go with "gravity" on this one. You have noticed that some layers that aren't on the bottom contain rocks, right?

So, you deny Chadwick's observation that the Shinumo cliffs are formed by erosion of the Shinumo Quartzite? Can you tell us how they did form? But erosion did created some sections? What are you saying? I thought your point was that there was no erosion until the Cenozoic...And while you're at it maybe you could go back and explain how a dendritic drainage pattern shows up in the subsurface without erosion. With references, please. Why not? Why do you disagree with Chadwick? Is he a bad YEC geologist? Why have you not responded to the citations that we have given you on this? Even your own Wiki citation said that original horizontality is just a guideline and that often sediments are deposited on sloping surfaces.Please acknowledge something... The point was that I'm sure YOU know.

This discussion has really gotten out of hand. I think part of it is due to the nature of forums such as this where continuity is often broken and then picked up again with misunderstanding.IIRC, the reason for bringing in dropstones is to show that soft sediments can deform around hard objects.This is because it was Faith's contention that only strata (her definition: hard rock layers) can deform around some kind of disturbance; and furthermore that soft sediments should form strictly horizontal layers.Clearly, these statements are false. The layers in the images are clearly deformed while soft, caused by impact of the stones contemporaneous with sedimentation; and the upper layers show non-horizontal original layering draping over the stones.I see no other solution.So then, Faith decided that the stones are 'intrusive'. If so, they should show some evidence of their source. For instance, we know that salt domes are intrusive and where they come from by the disruption of the strata that they leave in their path.This is all just another rabbit hole in the Great Unconformity. Edited by edge, : No reason given.

That they were both deposited in the Flood, probably a few months apart. That all fossil contents of all the strata represent living things that died in the Flood. Throughout the various threads on the Flood I have provided quite a bit of evidence. The Grand Canyon cross sections give different kinds of evidence, but particularly evidence that there was no tectonic or volcanic activity during the entire deposition of the strata of what you call the Phanerozoic Era, from the Tapeats to the Claron. This is a strong suggestion that those aren't time periods at all, just a very deep stack of different sediments with different fossil remains in them.And in this thread I've given a couple arguments against the idea that the Great Unconformity was ever an "erosional surface." They are much too level and flat for that in some instances -- Message 213 and Message 313 -- and in the picture of the New York road cut you posted, which I discuss in Message 967. the way the layer sags into the depression in the gneiss shows that it was already there when the depression occurred. No time gap between the formation of the gneiss and the deposition of the strata above it strongly calls into question the idea of enormous periods of time for the formation of these rocks. HBD then put up some diagrams you all claim prove that strata CAN drape over pre-existing rocks. Well, the New York road cut shows a layer hanging there in the depression, not even "draping," but perhaps an experiment can be done on those diagrams too.Plenty of evidence.I've also come up with a way an angular unconformity could have occurred after all the rocks were in place.There's also the sheer silliness of imputing time periods to slabs of rock, that should count as evidence, and there's the genetic evidence I've also argued on other threads, that the reduction of genetic diversity by microevolution over generations, starting with the genetic bottleneck at the Flood, demonstrates a short time period for living things on the earth, in the range of thousands, not millions, of years, but more pointedly, that the genetic processes that bring about variation within Species, that is, microevolution, show that evolution itself leads to less ability to evolve down any particular genetic path.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Originally I think it was something else. Faith claimed that the world-wide sedimentary record was formed in a geological instant by a single event, the great Flood. Dropstones were introduced to show that at one time glaciers had floated on lakes and seas above sedimentary layers on lake and sea beds. Stones fell from these melting glaciers, embedded themselves part way into the sedimentary layers on lake and sea beds, then sedimentation continued on top of the dropstones. Dropstones disprove that deposition of all sedimentary layers around the world was continuous and occurred in a very short period of time.Later horizontality became an issue with dropstones, because Faith claimed that sediments would never deposit in any way but perfectly horizontally around objects on lake and sea beds, rather than forming layers that conform to the object's shape. I think this is what you meant when you said that "soft sediments can deform around hard objects," but simple-minded laypeople like myself might not necessarily recognize that you're talking about a process of deposition, but might think you're describing what happens when a hard object falls onto soft sediments. Yes. Faith has not yet explained why she thinks all evidence of the passing of an intrusive object would be erased.

I keep staring at this wondering what you could possibly mean about the second part of it. As far as the experiment goes, yes it would show one or the other as stated, but, particularly in the case of the right side, that further deposition isn't needed to form the "drape" effect over the stone, but I can't figure out how you could have the idea that I don't acknowledge that strata can be deformed while soft since that's been the point of all my arguments. It's the point of my argument about the NY road cut where the still-soft strata were deformed at the same time the gneiss was tectonically disturbed, leaving the depression on the left into which the soft but formed layers sagged. That's my whole argument. Saying I deny that the strata could be deformed while soft is boggling. But so are many of the ideas you impute to me, such as that I'm expecting mudslides from granite and other absurdities. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

So, if they were deposited only a few months apart, why are there no mammals in the early layers and no trilobites in the upper layers?Why are there so many evaporites, sand dunes, dinosaur tracks, river sediments and multiple transgression sequences occurring within one year of flooding? Completely wrong. First, you ignore the deposition and metamorphism of the Vishnu rocks and their granite intrusions, along with the GC Supergroup that was deposited and faulted, that all happened before the Great Unconformity.Then, you ignore the tectonism that was happening in other parts of the world at the same time as the GC sediments were being deposited. And really, can you tell us how long a quiet period of deposition should last?Next, you ignore the fact that there are several unconformities within the GC Phanerzoic rocks, along with the formation of meander loops in the early times of the Colorado River.It goes on and on. So, all you've really got is denial. There is no reason that a period of quiet sedimentation cannot last for extended periods of time in a given area. Again, you have been given numerous examples of 'straight and flat' modern erosional surfaces along with at least 3 or 4 mechanisms for producing them. In return, you make vague referrals to shearing even though you have absolutely no evidence of shearing. Then you say that some places are sheared and some are not...This is simple denial on your part. And then, we provide you with evidence that this can happen in a sedimentary environment. We provide images and testimony, even from from your fellow YECs, that this can happen. We show you several mechanisms and examples of deforming sediments on hard surfaces with no other plausible explanation.And you simply deny. You have never provided evidence that the gneiss and sediments are of the same age or that there is not time gap.You fail to support your arguments. What do you mean 'hanging'? Your wording is dense and innaccurate in most cases. We have almost no idea how to interpret your posts.This is murky logic. Plenty of faulty logic and misunderstanding. No diagnostic evidence. Which remains secret evidently. You have not shown how dendritic shaped drainages can form in solid rock, nor have you shown how sporadic shearing occurred to produce the unconformity surface. You have avoided discussing likely pitfalls in your reasoning.This is story telling, not evidence. No. 'Silliness' is not evidence. It is a value judgement by your incredulous self.Still, no evidence... Off topic.Faith, reasonable people would be embarrassed to make the arguments you are making with a straight face. Every one has been bluntly refuted or shown to be faulty logic, all based on ignorance and dogmatic religious blindness.

Why not? Where did the stone come from? Faith, I don't think I'm alone in stating that much of the time I have no way of knowing what you are thinking.You have said that draping of sediments around topographic highs or over carbonate mounds, or dropstones is not possible. We have given you two mechanisms and several visual examples and yet you deny. First, that does not rule out deformation on a sedimentary surface. Second, you keep telling us that the unconformity is a shear plane. You are hopelessly confused. So then, there is a age difference between the gneiss and the sediments. Otherwise, why are they so soft compared to the gneiss? You said that the whole world was turned into mud. I'm sorry if I interpreted that to mean that the whole world turned to mud (see message 1315). Edited by edge, : No reason given.

What does any of this have to do with the timing of the flood deposits? I specifically indicated "The Phanerozoic Era" because it is above the Vishnu and the Supergroup, which are a separate problem. If you stick to the Phaanerozoic Rocks there is NO sign of any tectonic or volcanic disturbance, as I clearly marked on the cross sections as we discussed them. We don't need to include the basement rocks in order to establish the point that the absence of tectonic and volcanic activity for those hundreds of millions of years is not consistent with the Old Earth interpretation. Not very long according to most Old Earth discussions I've encountered, which call this a very active planet. I'm content to prove the inactivity at one place where it can be definitively seen. I'd like to prove it elsewhere because I believe the Grand Canyon is merely one illustration of what the Flood did everywhere. The strata were laid down everywhere at the same time and tectonically disturbed afterward everywhere. What you call an unconformity is often just a contact where Old Earthism expects another layer to be present that isn't. I regard that as a self-serving joke. The meanders formed in a part of the canyon that was flat enough for the purpose. What's the big deal? And all you've got is this repeated denial of the implications of the lack of disturbance over such an immense period of time. None of your examples was straight and level. Erosion can't do that and your examples prove that it can't. And yes, there are different ways the lower rocks were disturbed beneath the upper strata in different places, but the evidence shows that that IS the order of events in all those places. The road cut sag is NOT a draping. And I remain convinced the draping did not and could not occur from DEPOSITION, but had to be caused by deformation due to the pushing up of the lower rock. That's my view of it and I haven't changed it. But any YEC who holds your view of it can't remain a YEC for long, and besides I disagree about various things with many creationists. I don't recgognize your last sentence so I'm not commenting on it. The evidence is and always has been the sagging of the FORMED LAYERS on the left that have kept their shape AS LAYERS while sagging into the depression which was obviously created after they were formed. FORMED BUT STILL SOFT ENOUGH TO DEFORM as I've said a million times. They are not "draping," they are simply sagging into the low place.Have to come back to this later.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Digressions onto subtopics related to the main topic are expected in any thread, but Faith recently posted a summary of all her evidence for the flood, and that seems to be drawing discussion off into a wide range of subtopics. Please focus on just those subtopics most closely related to the main topic, which is how the Great Unconformity formed.I'm ruling these specific subtopics as off-topic in this thread:

• The amount of tectonic activity in the Grand Canyon region, unless it's related directly to the Grand Unconformity.
  ​
• The grouping of fossil types into specific layers.
  ​
• Genetic bottlenecks and reduction in genetic diversity.