The Great Creationist Fossil Failure

Yes, the strata are real.What would be wrong would be to say: "The strata is real."It's especially wrong if you're implying that there's just one strata, there are so many instances of different ones.It's deceitful to conflate that implication with the entirety of The Geological Column.

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That the geo column is never complete doesn't make the strata not real.
  —Faith

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The geological column is always complete.It's just made up of different rocks in different places on earth. The geological column under my house starts with 6 feet of sediment - dirt - and then several hundred feet of chalk. The column under your house is different.There's no such thing as THE geological column except as a drawing representing a stylised composite of it.

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The geological column is always complete.

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Not really. There are periods of non-deposition and erosion. Local geological columns rarely even contain rock from every geological period.

What he said. (Except strata not stratum.)

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Not really. There are periods of non-deposition and erosion. Local geological columns rarely even contain rock from every geological period.
  —PaulK

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That's what I said - the column is different in different locations, but it's always complete - there is never a gap where rock should be with other rocks floating above it. That's 'cos there's no such thing as THE geological column. It's a stylised teaching aid.

Actually, you guys are saying slightly different things. What PaulK is saying is that there is only one column that is a kind of composite of what is found world wide. You are clearly saying that there are different columns in different places.

I'm trying to say both!There's one composite, stylised, column that probably doesn't exist anywhere.Real geological columns vary depending which area of the world you're in.

Actually, there's no such thing as 'The' Geological Column.There can be 'A' Geological Column under your house or 'A' Geological Column of an area or 'A' Geological Column for a region. And those Geological Columns are different all over the world. Geological Columns refer to rocks.The Geological time scale refers to Systems or Eons or Eras or Periods or Epochs. Not rocks.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

Is that correct? Perhaps the question is one of semantics. The column does not exist as a composite of rocks from all eras, which appears to be the way sites like ICR and AIG refer to the column, but the term does appear in scientific sources as well, although the meaning is a bit different.http://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/eens1110/geotime.htm

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The Geologic Column

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Over the past 150 years detailed studies of rocks throughout the world based on stratigraphic correlation have allowed geologists to correlate rock units and break them into time units. The result is the geologic column (on next page), which breaks relative geologic time into units of known relative age.

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According to this source, the geological column consists of correlated time units with a description of the life in those units and not rocks.The definition above may be informal. The term geological column as strictly defined refers to the geology of rocks found in a locality. So there is a grand canyon geological column and a north dakota geological column. In that sense, there is no "The Geological Column". Creationist sites always blur the distinction between a geological column of rocks and a column of time units. Given that their idea is that the whole thing was formed by a single Flood, perhaps that blurring is understandable.

Interestingly, the figure is labeled "Geologic Time Scale". I think that Pressie's issue is with the word "The", suggesting that there is only one and that it is 'geological', or made up of rocks when really, it's a calendar. So, yeah, it's grown to be a kind of vague term.Because of this confusion, I think that most geologists would use the term "Geological Time Scale" along with "Stratigraphic Column" in a more precise manner. So, one could look at it as the strata being imposed on the time scale, complete with gaps and erasures.

Reading evc forum is somewhat like living in a permanent state of deja vu. I had exactly the same debate with Faith some time ago: and (to PaulK in the same thread): This inability to absorb information and retain it is one of the reasons I haven't debated here for some time.PS - sorry, forgot how to link to posts in old threads...Edited by Boof, : No reason given.

If you think about it, that is the way it must be. You would have to abstract most of the geology out of the column if you wished to reduce everything to a single diagram. Even the most massive volcanic events do not cover the planet, and it would be foolish to expect everywhere to receive the same sediment.And this leads back to the topic. While the rocks taken alone are not a good guide to the order of the strata (except for radiometric dating, where applicable) the fossil contents of the rock - where present - often are. As William Smith discovered. The fact is not based in any assumptions contrary to YEC belief. The usual false accusation of "brainwashing" hardly applies - if it were not a fact it would easily be disproved (and how could it have been discovered in the first place ?). And so it stands, a clear refutation of flood geology.

Not really. It's a question of how the term is used or not used by those hundreds of thousands of persons doing the natural science called geology for a living. Creationists never tell the truth about what the natural science of geology entails. They make up their own definition and then pretend that it is "scientific".For geologists it's very easy, though. The Cambrian is not a layer. The Ordovician is not a layer. The Silurian is not a layer. Same with all those other Periods.For geologists in every country it's actually very easy to figure out that the Cambrian happened before the Ordovician and that the Ordovician occurred before the Silurian did. Those are Periods. Not rock layers.Oh, and contrary to what the creationists call "science', rocks dating from the Cambrian are found in lots of locations all over the world. And rocks from the Ordovician are found on the surface in lots of locations all over the world. And rocks from the Silurian outcrop in lots of locations all over the world.
Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

I tried to point that out to Faith in Message 129 of The Geological Timescale is Fiction whose only reality is stacks of rock but it was another post to which Faith did not respond if she even read it. It had a link to a map of North American dinosaur fossil finds and to the exposed Cretaceous, Jurassic and Triassic rock formations (the eras when dinosaurs might have lived and died) that exist today.Here is that map again. She she often says she has a hard time seeing stuff it even has a magnifying glass supplied.

Faith is convinced that the Cambrian is a 'slab' of rock, the Ordovician is a 'slab' of rock, the Silurian is a 'slab' of rock, etc. That's it for Faith. I don't think that it is worth even trying to have a rational conversation with Faith.