Summations Only

Hello Boof The supposed seismic imagery of deeply buried "landscapes" has come up here many times and my answer is those are not actual landscapes that were ever on the surface of the earth, but simply features like "canyons" carved by running water, probably after being deposited and buried, that got filled in by the next layer of sediment. That's really the only kind of thing that is seen on that sort of imaging, not enough to hang an entire landscape on of the sort we see on the surface of the earth today. You are basically describing Walther's Law though giving it thousands of unnecessary years. Such a scenario implies that all living things in its path, land creatures anyway, would eventually have died, and at its peak everything on the land that was covered by it would be well and truly dead after those thousands of years of rising and then presumably falling at a similar rate. But the strata that this process laid down supposedly represent all the living things fossilized within them. Which of course they can't be if they're dead and buried in the sediment.I suppose you are describing the supposed six "cratonic sequences" or "epeiric seas" that periodically inundated North America as well as other places around the globe? Some of those look like they took a lot more than mere thousands of years, judging from a chart showing their duration, since they may span the greatest part of a whole time period dated to cover many millions of years. Where they affect land creatures, at their peak what's left living? But actually these seas apparently killed off all kinds of sea life that is now extinct, such as in the Western Interior Seaway. Buried and fossilized too. Supposedly they WOULD have lived there, but then they died in huge numbers. Which I guess can be rationalized except that it seems like an awful lot of them to get fossilized instead of scavenged. OK I'll accept that explanation. It fits of course with what I'm saying about how such a transgression of the sea would kill everything in its path. And then perhaps we also have the question of there being areas that didn't get covered by the water, where we may also see lots of fossilized land creatures, and then I'd wonder why we don't see the deep tree roots THERE. Of course if the seas covered the entire globe, well, THAT of course explains it very nicely. OK I'll take your word for that. Catastrophic or not, however, such a scenario would be just as deadly, as I argue above.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Not what I said. No. No. No.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What's so odd about the idea that the Flood should have left shorelines?

No landscapes BETWEEN STRATA is the idea, or even "within" strata since that's implied too. The only landscapes on the surface would have been before the Flood, which would have been obliterated by the Flood waters, starting with the heavy rain and continuing with the rising sea water laying down its sediments; and the landscapes that have formed after the Flood. Looking at the strata all that you see is tight lines between them, but wherever there is an exposed surface you get hills and valleys, trees and other living things -- which is how I'm using the term "landscape."What we are arguing is whether there was ever a surface landscape in, say, the "Devonian period," or the "Permian," or the "Jurassic" etc, which would supposedly have left SOME clues instead of those flat straight contacts between their strata and the next.I hope this suffices for the enlightenment you seek.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sorry I was not clear. I thought you'd all remember the seismic image of a jagged gash deep in the earth which was interpreted as a former canyon, later filled in by sediment, sand I think. I believe it was presented as an image that converted someone named Morton somethingorother from a YEC to an Old Earther. Mostly what I see is the strata, strata, strata and more strata, those originally flat straight sedimentary deposits that are now great slabs of rock piled very deep and often extending for huge distances. So when I'm shown a seismic image of an enormous gash in those rocks buried very very deep and called a former canyon, I see no canyon unless you want to call it an "underground canyon" but that could be misleading, I see an enormous gash in the strata buried very deep. I wouldn't call it a canyon unless it occurred at the surface NOW. There is nothing about it other than its outline to suggest it was ever anything but that, a huge gash in the rock filled in with sediment, a feature most likely created by the very running water that created all the strata, and while it might have begun when it was at the surface it never became a "landscape" from any of the actual clues given, it just got carved out of the sediment and filled with another sediment, and successive sedimentary deposits buried it deeper and deeper. Really, there's nothing in the image itself to suggest anything else, and again there's the fact of the utterly barren surfaces of the strata in the stack that we see in so many places. I see no reason to consider this a former landscape, or "previous topography" that occurred on the surface of the earth. By the way there is no clue in the illustration as to the depth of this cross section, or where the current surface is now, which would help orient me to what I'm looking at. Would a paleosol occur at the surface now or is it buried?The term "horizon" is of course an OE concept that implies an ancient surface, but all that just shows the theory as applied to the depicted facts; the facts themselves can suggest other interpretations.All the features shown would be created by water, same as the seismic image discussed above. That is, there isn't any hint of an actual landscape, just the effects of running water within layers of sediment and paleosol, right? Just because there is paleosol present doesn't mean it was ever surface soil on that very spot, but just one of the layers rapidly deposited in succession. It's OE theory that leads you to your conclusion, not the actual facts as shown there.

Yes, I don't think I said otherwise, did I? Where are you getting this scenario? I've argued that the receding Flood waters REMOVED bazillions of tons of sediment from the strata that it had deposited as it rose. I haven't been completely clear if there had been any or much deposition in the receding phase but there should have been so much catastrophic erosion I don't see how there could have been, unless there were quieter zones separate from the eroding zones somehow. Also, at its height the Flood waters just stood there for some time, so that it should have deposited everything it carried by the time it started abating.I've pictured the receding Flood waters as the cause of the carving of the Grand Staircase and the Grand Canyon, both, and of the whole Kaibab Plateau and whatever else was scoured off in that vicinity. The strata would have been deposited to something like a couple miles or more, maybe three miles, above the current rim of the Grand Canyon, most of that breaking up and washing into cracks that made the canyon itself, some of it remaining to form the stairs of the Grand Staircase.Where are you getting the idea it had hardened anyway? I've supposed the deeper layers had hardened enough to hold their shape from compaction, though not being lithified, while the higher the stack the less compaction there would have been in the upper layers, which is why I picture the strata above the GC breaking up and washing away, leaving those intact from the Kaibab down while enormous quantities from what became the canyon itself were also washed away.In other areas the receding water could have been less catastrophic and left shorelines on the sides of basin areas. How is this so silly?abe: You know what's really silly? It's when people who are hostile to the idea of the Flood try to imagine what it would have been like -- or even think they understand what Flood believers say about how it happened. THOSE ideas are sheer silliness.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I've done a fair amount of reading about archaeological excavations and I'm aware of the layering that accumulates over even a series of settlements, on top of which new settlements grew, even many such settlements over time. In the Middle East these ended up as "tells," mounded areas underneath which there could be quite a series of former settlements one on top of another.The thing is I can't for the life of me make this process fit the strata I'm talking about.For one thing the strata often DO cover great distances, and in any case are never confined to the space of a tell or Roman buildings. In my favorite cross section of the Grand Canyon area you can see how the strata that are visible in the wall of the canyon extend for hundreds of miles north beneath the Grand Staircase, all in the same order as in the canyon, and quite straight and flat except where lifted over the canyon area (although people here may get nitpicky and suppose I'm talking about an impossibly perfect straightness), and the same order and straightness no doubt also extends many hundreds of miles to the south, off the area of the illustration. For another thing, there really is no comparison between the KIND of material that covered the Roman buildings and the sediments that are stacked as shown in that cross section. As I understand it the layers in the tells, and most probably around the Roman villa, are composed of quite a mingled mass of stuff and not at all sorted into discrete sediments which is the main characteristic of the geo column.I also don't understand how "soil on top of soil" expresses the OE interpretation of the strata, since the idea does seem to be that a landscape DID build where a particular layer now sits. It would have to BUILD there because all there was previously was the lower layer of sediment, in most cases no leftover remains from that previous time period protruding into the new layer at all.And how do you get a new discrete flat layer on top of that without mixing and blurring, if they were both soft sediments anyway? The contacts between so many of the layers are clear demarcations between two entirely different kinds of sediment.I don't see the similarity, vimesey. Don't you need high compaction and water IMMEDIATELY to bring about fossilization? Not buying it, vimesey. This sort of process wouldn't produce such clearly demarcated differences between sediments -- it would mingle and blur them. The best you could claim is that erosion took away the mingled section and left the clearly different sediments, as some have suggested in this debate some time ago, but I don't see how you could get such straight flat contact surfaces from that scenario of gradual change.I don't think anything in OE theory accounts for the straight flat surfaces of the strata and the tight contacts between them. Um, surely much of it got coughed up out of the sea, the limestones for instance. And even if much of it had been part of the surface of the planet, the question is "where" it occurred -- right there on top of the lower sedimentary layer? I don't see much reason to think so as a general rule, though perhaps in some cases there's a fit.You got a lot of cheers for what seems to me just another bad visualization of how the strata formed, a depressing indication that nobody here is really thinking clearly about the problem.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The problem is that the typical depiction of the Geo column where the time periods are shown identifies the period occupied by the strata as covering specific spans of time. Since a span of time is represented only by a slab of rock it is the rock that is dated to that range of time, and that range of time covers multiple, even hundreds of millions of years, before and after which other sedimentary rocks are identified with another many millions of years. And on top of that they are identified as specific Time Periods and given names like Carboniferous and Triassic and so on. Because of these designations it is very hard not to think of these time periods as clearly separated. The rocks are clearly different, and the character of the rock plus its fossil contents clearly define the time period attached to them. The fossil contents are understood to define a landscape, clearly different from the landscape of the prior period and from the succeeding period.Yes that in itself is very odd and I can see why you would want us to override the strong impression given by these depictions and try to think of it as all a "continuous aggregation." But it's your own system that makes this impossible. When you encounter a fossil in a particular layer of rock you identify it quite sharply as belonging to such-and-such a period of time; a fossil in the layer above is unequivocally assigned to a later time.This highlights the problem I note over and over that to my mind utterly belies the whole OE/evolutionist system of thought. There is no way reality would have arranged itself in terms of separate sedimentary rocks representing ancient time periods. The idea is simply preposterous. Any idea of time gradations through series after series of fossil remains identified with evolutionary progress SHOULD expect a blurry continuum, not a discrete stack of rocks with clearly identifiable life forms. The complaint that the Flood would jumble things and not organize them has plausibility until you face the fact that an ancient earth with specifically identifiable time periods with specific life forms is even less likely. There's enough evidence that water forms layers and if it sorts sediments we have to assume it also sorts other things. And its reasonableness only increases when compared to the idea that hundreds of millions of years would have been naturally broken up into clearly identifiable periods with clearly identifiable slabs of rocks to mark them, containing clearly identifiable life forms. Nothing in our experience on this planet indicates that such a history could have occurred. Time is messy. The only thing that marks it is our own marking of it; Nature couldn't care less. [abe: I TAKE THIS BACK: time IS marked by Nature, by the seasons for instance, by the yearly movement around the sun] There were no separate time periods covering millions of years, no separate landscapes with their own peculiar life forms conveniently marked by a slab of rock containing the fossils of those life forms. See above. This is just an ad hoc response to the recognition that the Geological Timescale is as irrational as I just described it to be, and an attempt to deny the clear presentation and acceptance of it in spite of its irrationality, as if it made sense. We've GOT the discrete sedimentary rocks. They are the reality. Geologists built the timescale on those layers of rock. Yeah yeah yeah, again an ad hoc attempt to mop up the incredible craziness of the Geo Timescale.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

That's a well-chosen illustration to get the point across about many stratigraphic columns rather than just one. But I don't think it makes much if any difference to the discussion here. But only in the most trivial sense: a different sediment, a different speed of deposition perhaps, certainly differences in how tectonic pressures affected the strata after they were laid down, but different results? The same fossils are found in the same layer everywhere, fitting in to the Geologic Timescale just fine, no difference there. The overall picture of the strata is pretty consistent where it counts.

All I have to do is glance at your accusatory posts to know I have no interest in reading them. I note your point about the exception to the rule, the Wingate. If you want to be taken seriously, talk to me like a civilized human being for a change.

I thought that was Steno's rule, not mine. Original Horizontality you know.As for cross bedding, it "crosses" a perfectly horizontal deposition in the case of say, the Coconino sandstone. It's not the cross-bedding that forms the bed of the sand, but it is always found at an angle to the bed. Why is that and how does it in any way break Steno's law?

While that's a much more realistic-sounding situation than the usual one encountered, doesn't it throw your neat Fossil Order into disarray? I mean, Devonian and Ordovician fossils and "landscapes" aren't the same.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

At the moment I was merely responding to the Devonian-Ordovician remark by Moose. However, there does seem to be an observable difference between the rocks deposited below the Permian and those above it, that I've wondered about. My Floodist view leads me to hypothesize that the Flood was running out of sediments as it reached its ultimate height, but it could no doubt use some adjustment. This is interesting. I suppose the clues to this are found in the rocks, right? But before getting in to that, I want to put this GC-GS cross section up again because it looks to me like the strata from the rim of the canyon on up to the top of the Grand Staircase must have followed the same pattern of deposition as those below. That is, despite the fact that most of them have been eroded away, they seem to have been originally just as straight and flat as the lower strata, to be just as consistent in their order, and to span the same distance: So my impression from this is that the terrestrial deposits are identical in form to the marine deposits. I didn't check but I would guess that the butte to the south of the Grand Canyon is made up of the same strata as are found in the Grand Staircase.What has seemed different about them is that they seem messier over all, lumpier, without as consistent texture. But I can find exceptions in both upper and lower strata so I'm not sure that means much. The limestone Claron isn't messier, for instance.One thing that has struck me is that the Navajo sandstone is frequently found in pieces rather than as part of a complete span; pieces like the Wave you've posted, and those odd lumpy rocks you or Tanypteryx posted in the thread about the Southwestern rocks, pieces that occur here and there separate from others, blobs of sandstone complete with cross-bedding but not laid out flat like the geo column. This is where I get the idea the Flood ran out of sediment. What interests me on this thread is the idea that there ever was a landscape at a particular time with the particular conditions ("depositional environment") determined by qualities in a particular rock, and the particular living things found fossilized in that particular rock. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What's to explain about your country having no fossils? It's interesting and something to think about, but it doesn't challenge anything I've said as far as I know, though you seem to be implying it does? When you say it has an old lithography, what do you mean? Are there strata?By the way I can't get your link to work.

You seem to think I'd object to what you are saying but there's nothing to object to. Except of course the dates, but I'm in the habit of ignoring conventional dates. It's funny how people just take the dating system for granted as if you could know how old something is yourself and agree out of your own knowledge.Otherwise, ice age, no problem, no fossils, interesting but no problem, etc.