Summations Only

Faith replied twice to Stile's Message 957. Here are issues stemming from Faith's responses in Message 964.

1. From Stile's Message 957:
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   Stile in Message 957 writes:

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   But... all the creatures that lived in year 1 are all dead by year 100. Most are decomposed and eaten away. One died and wasn't touched, and is now surrounded by an inch of sediment.
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   Faith had a few problems with this. Here she wonders how a slow sedimentation rate of an inch per hundred years could bury anything before it is eaten or decomposed:
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   Faith in Message 964 writes:

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   First of all if it takes 100 years to bury something an inch deep, by that time any creature would have been decomposed completely, utterly disintegrated, never having a chance to get fossilized at all.
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2. Here Faith seems unsure whether Stile described a succession of environments or a single environment continuously growing upward because of net deposition. In the end she latches onto the former interpretation, the one not described by Stile, and seems to conclude that because only one of the succession of environments can be preserved as a layer that the idea of a succession of environments must not be possible:
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   Faith in Message 964 writes:

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   You seem to have lots of landscapes or a landscape that keeps growing even beyond the depth of the thickest rock in any strata column. Somehow you have to get things down to a level that would actually appear in a stratigraphic column and my impression is that you have way too much going on for that. One environment has to end up in a flattish featureless rock.
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3. Faith also wondered about the taller aspects of life, like trees, and believes that since they're not present in strata that they must have disintegrated, which is largely true. It might be helpful to describe what happens to most trees after they die that prevent most of them from being preserved in the geologic record, and also to describe trees that have been preserved and the events causing the preservation.
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4. Here Faith says she understood Stile to be saying that only one fossil was preserved. It should be emphasized that the one fossil was from year one, and that the subsequent thousands of years would have buried thousands more fossils.
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   Faith in Message 964 writes:

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   You've got ocean and land environments but only as sediments, not landscapes with a variety of plants and other living things, and you only have one fossil buried under all that. In reality there are millions of fossils found in stratified rocks. Bazillions. You don't seem to have accounted for that. So you've got the original landscape which is finally rock at 1600 feet deep and two million years, with only one fossil in it,...
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5. The meaning of the portion immediately following isn't apparent, so I ask Faith to offer some clarification. The puzzling parts are about not ever having been a landscape/environment (which is the opposite of Stile's scenario, where the landscape/environment was continuous), and not having the characteristics necessary to become rock:
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   Faith in Message 964 writes:

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   ...with all that sediment on top of it that doesn't have the characteristics of rock in the stratigraphic column since it's never been a landscape/environment. By identifying it as the stratigraphic column you clearly intend it to become rock, but they lack the characteristics of the rocks in a column. Different sediments? You haven't mentioned that. Fossils, none. Normal characteristics of a landscape with plants are not mentioned.
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6. Here Faith expresses skepticism that the height of the gradual accumulation of deposits upon a landscape could ever become strata resembling what is seen in the geologic record.
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   Faith in Message 964 writes:

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   Remember, a stratigraphic column is one extensive flat rock on top of another. At the same geographic location. All these landscapes are forming at that same location, one on top of another. Creatures are roaming around on the increasing levels of the landscape at that same geographic location. Your main problem is getting all of it down to the proportions and characteristics of those slabs of rock.
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   Stile's scenario has 800 feet of land sediment on top of 720 feet of ocean sediment on top of 80 feet of land sediment, which are thicknesses in the same range as formations at the Grand Canyon, so Faith will have to further explain what the problem is here.
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7. Here Faith's still appears to have a problem with habitats that gradually accumulate deposits:
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   Faith in Message 964 writes:

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   And when that happens THAT's when there is no more habitat. But I have to admit this is one place I get confused. You keep recreating habitat as sediment accumulates, which in a way seems reasonable,...
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   Expressing this in a way for Faith to comment on where she sees the problems, the habitat is not recreated. The habitat exists continuously unchanged except for very gradual deposition at the rate of a quarter millimeter per year. Returning to my earlier example of a lawn, if a homeowner added a quarter millimeter of top soil to his lawn every year, in what way is that destroying habitat. After a hundred years the lawn is now growing on a surface an inch higher, but at no point in that hundred years was the habitat recreated. Each year during that century grass grew, worms thrived, birds caught worms, some insects lived on the grass, other insects like ants and grubs lived beneath the surface. There was true for every year during that century, and for every century that followed. The intention was to communicate the idea of a continuous but very gradually changing habitat. We need to understand where Faith sees the habitat being recreated.
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8. That paragraph concludes with more concern about how it becomes rock:
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   ...but at some point it all has to become rock.
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   Attempting an explanation, as very gradual deposition continues over the centuries the older portions of former landscape become more and more deeply buried. Eventually the pressure becomes enough that combined with the passage of time they begin turning to rock. Here's a character-style representation:
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   Year 1
   
   Year 1: Surface where life lives                       
   Year 1: Soil in which life lives                       
   Basement Rock
   
   Year 2
   
   Year 2: New Surface where life lives                   
   Year 2: New soil .25 mm thick in which life lives      
   Year 1: Former surface now buried .25 mm               
   Year 1: Soil in which life lives                       
   Basement Rock
   
   Year 3
   
   Year 3: New Surface where life lives                   
   Year 3: New soil .25 mm thick in which life lives      
   Year 2: Former surface now buried .25 mm               
   Year 2: Old soil .25 mm thick in which life lives      
   Year 1: Former surface now buried .50 mm               
   Year 1: Soil in which life lives                       
   Basement Rock

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   Now jumping ahead to the millennial mark:
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   Year 1000
   
   Year 1000: New surface where life lives                                      
   Year 1000: New soil .25 mm thick in which life lives                         
   Years 2-999: Former surfaces and deposition ~1 foot thick in which life lives
   Year 1: Soil in which life lives                                          
   Basement Rock

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   It's also important to understand that the .25 mm of annual deposition represents an average. No region of significant extent experiences the same things, including amount of deposition or erosion. Faith is correct that preserved life that eventually become fossils are not gradually buried at the rate of .25 mm per year. Life does need sudden burial to protect it from predators and decay, such as a stream bank collapse or a tree or rock falling on it.

There was more in Faith's message, but I will stop here.

The layers need not be extensive or flat. The habitat is lost in one place but gained in another.Remember Walther's Law? As I have said many times: local basins, such as swamps, lakes, sand bars, sand dunes, etc. can be preserved in the geological record (and often are). They can be preserved by later burial, even though they were originally deposited above sea level.Do you deny that swamps are recorded in the geological record? If the habitat is lost, then it is lost to the geological record and only the terrain remains. However, as I've said many times before, there are some locations where that environment is preserved.So, the habitat was never really lost, though it was destroyed in many places. Yes, unless they became extinct or evolved into other species. Except that is does exist in some places. As I've stated many times, the only reason we have dinosaur fossils is that they were preserved in swamps, sand dunes and river sand bars. We have the footprints to prove it. Think of Walther's Law. As the environment moves across the contient as sea level rises, the environments move along with the shoreline. A species living in a swamp that is filling with sand will end up in another swamp in a thousand years.Your problem is not a problem.

It is common to say that something exists (present tense) within a stratigraphic record. If you have a better explanation of the rock types this would be a good time to present them. Okay so how do you interpret a geological section that has an enclosed basin with water in it? Why not? How can you say this? Have you actually mapped the geology of any location? Because they become protected from erosion by overlying material. In the real world, there is a lot more to go on than just a stratigraphic column. Plus we know something about swamps, sand dunes, etc.

I think that I have said plenty of times that net erosion is a generalization and that there some depositional environments can be preserved.Once again, I will repeat some of them: lake sediments, swamp sediments, river sediments and the occasional paleosoil. Because plants can stabilize a terrain and slopes may go to horizontal (that would mean no movement toward a stream). Erosion may slow and even go negative, but it's still an areal of net erosion over time. The formation of soil is one part of erosion. If you were around long enough and the sea rose or a river encroached on your house, the soil would eventually disappear. Well, it could be bedrock, but in this case, we are talking soil.What ever lives in and on this soil is not OF the bedrock, nor is it OF whatever comes along later (a beach sand, a mudflow, a volcanic flow, etc.).

I think Faith is missing the time element. Even though she's trying to gain a feel for what geology says (not accept what it says), I think she often doesn't incorporate the time element into her thinking. In the case of a transgressing sea, when a habitat is described as being lost Faith appears to think it means at a rate that would affect organisms during their lifetimes, forcing them to pick up and move great distancesAnd Faith thinks of Walther's Law in terms of a flood moving across a landscape in days or weeks, sorting material it picks up and redepositing it in distinct layers. She doesn't think of a beach moving inland at maybe a foot per century and gradually leaving behind a characteristic sequence of sand/shale/limestone layers. She doesn't believe geological processes are still laying down strata in the manner observed in the geological record. I found this very confusing, and you may be addressing a different point than the one Faith raised - not sure. I'm aware of several things you may be saying but can't sort it out myself. I think Faith meant that she thinks geology's views require fossils to show up in the geologic record in places other than where they lived. It needs to be understood why she believes geology thinks this.

I don't either, but when she talks about continental scale, flat sheets, she almost has to be talking about marine sediments. The key thing is that the habitats are destroyed, the bedrock topography is not. Because it's not being buried everywhere. Sure. It happens. Over the observation scale of human civilization, soils can accumulate to great depth from both the top and the bottom of the profile. This will probably sow more confusion, as usual, but here is an example of a depositional environment that, when conditions changed, became erosional. The flat alluvial plain in the center of the photograph formed by deposition above sea level in a mountain valley by the accumulation of coarse-grained materials. It was once flat and filled the valley.However, due to uplift of the Uncompahgre Plateau it is now being eroded by the same streams that formed it, and it will slowly, over a long period of time, erode away.

This is my impression. All I'm saying is that the habitat is not lost over the whole region of a species. For an individual, yes, it would either migrate or die. And, in fact many of them die anyway because that's what happens to all creatures.And if they are in a location where their habitat is preserved, we will find fossils of them. If not then the fossils will be washed away. That is also my impression. But no, they are either destroyed or preserved locally by erosion or burial in protected basins. I've been trying to figure that out for weeks.

As this discussion has proceeded I have been amazed by the things that Faith seems to think that geologists think. And when I read the explanations of how the processes actually work that are posted to correct her misunderstandings I am blown away that she doesn't get it. All through this discussion I keep thinking about the changes that I observed over many years at a pond where I studied dragonflies. I remember the first year that it totally dried up. In two days it went from having a couple inches of water in the relatively flat bottom to being drying mud. Thousands of fish were suddenly exposed and flopping around as they slowly suffocated. The sound was quite loud and disturbing. Dozens of herons and egrets showed up and feasted for several days but they really couldn't put a dent in them. Within a few days the mud-caked fish were desiccated corpses that barely smelled. Sedges rapidly grew and hid the remains and when the Fall rains refilled the pond the sedges formed a mat that completely covered the dead fish. I assume that all sorts of organisms fed on the soft remains and maybe some of the bones. By the next Spring there was a layer of soft mud covering the remains and the sedges started growing earlier.Several years later The pond dried up again and I went out on the cracked mud flats to get some buckets of the dried mud to use in some pond aquariums that I was rearing dragonfly nymphs in. I kept finding perfectly preserved fish skeletons that reminded me of some of the fish fossils I have seen in museums. I remember thinking that in a million years these fish might be fossilized.Sadly, my wonderful pond is now under a Walmart superstore.One positive side note, I found some dried up dragonfly nymphs in the dry, caked mud. They were so dry that that they floated when I put them in a bucket of water. After a couple hours, I looked in the bucket and they had disappeared. When I looked closer I realized that they were at the bottom and that they were alive. It turned out that I had discovered that dragonfly nymphs were drought resistant and subsequent research showed that many species have this ability.

I would think I'd said it enough times by now that this isn't about what I think Geologists think. Good grief.

Well, I can't figure out what you think or what your point is. The processes of geology, deposition, erosion, fossilization are so obvious and easy to understand that it is hard to believe that you really don't get it after all these discussions.I think that the gibberish of your "puzzle" and the rest of the stuff you have posted in this thread is a total con job.Good grief indeed.

Meant that to be a General Reply. Oh well.

Then you shouldn't be telling us all of the things that geologists have wrong.Especially when they are not true.

No debate then I guess, creationists just go away, right?

I got a bit overwhelmed by all the detail in your post so I'm sure I didn't do it justice. I've been avoiding trying to cover too much territory myself, so I stick to some small part of the scenario, so as not to overwhelm anybody -- maybe mostly myself. But anyway I'll try to get through it all. That may make communication easier, since the geologists can't help thinking along lines a creationist doesn't think along. Well, I fear you've lost me completely. I have no idea what you are trying to say here. I can't get past the idea that any dead thing could remain undisturbed under the conditions you describe, as you keep saying. Perhaps here is where my Floodist perspective makes it too difficult to follow you. That event would have provided perfect opportunities for fossilization of the billions of things in the rocks, by rapidly burying everything in wet sediment and subjecting it to compaction soon after burial, thus providing the ideal chemical environment for fossilization.Having said that, I gather you just want me to accept that this creature was undisturbed for 2500 years? Well, let's see how far I can go with that. I'm the one who would have a problem with the idea that God preserved the creature since I believe the natural effects of a worldwide Flood would do that just fine without divine intervention.But again, if you just want me to accept that it was preserved despite the utter lack of conditions that could have preserved it, let's see how far I can go with that assumption. OK, I misunderstood. I didn't include all the agents of decomposition in the category "scavenger," just larger creatures. So we can drop this and move on. So it is supposedly untouched by ALL agents of decomposition. OK. We're pushing the envelope of my ability to go with all this, but changing the numbers wouldn't help. I'll just keep holding on for now... OK, my mistake, though I might even want to quibble with that. But it's not a big deal so I won't quibble with it. OK No, let's move on for now. OK for now. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Some questions and comments:

1. From Edge's Message 979:
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   I think that I have said plenty of times that net erosion is a generalization and that there some depositional environments can be preserved.
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   Yes, I know, and that's why it seems contradictory when you sometimes appear to be saying that a landscape can only experience erosion.
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2. Again from Edge's Message 979:
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   The formation of soil is one part of erosion. If you were around long enough and the sea rose or a river encroached on your house, the soil would eventually disappear.
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   The scenario I've been pushing is the period during which the soil accumulates, as part of helping Faith see how landscapes can maintain livable habitats where life thrives while gradually rising in elevation with the accumulation of sediments.
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3. From Edges' Message 981:
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   The "puzzle" part is how a landscape can remain habitable while at the same time becoming buried.

   Because it's not being buried everywhere.
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   Faith isn't thinking of coastal habitat being very gradually destroyed while sea encroaches at the rate of a foot or two per century. She's thinking of sea rolling across the landscape and destroying habitat while creatures flee inland for their lives.
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   In the scenario I've been pushing the landscape *is* being buried everywhere in that local region, but at such a slow rate that that the habitat remains unchanged for centuries, even as it's elevation climbs annually millimeter by millimeter. Faith thinks this gradually accumulation of additional depth that slowly pushes the surface higher would destroy habitat, and we're trying to understand why.
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4. Again from Edges' Message 981:
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   Sure. It happens. Over the observation scale of human civilization, soils can accumulate to great depth from both the top and the bottom of the profile.
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   Unless this means that soils can accumulate at both higher and lower elevations of the landscape, I don't understand.
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5. Again from Edges' Message 981:
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   This will probably sow more confusion, as usual, but here is an example of a depositional environment that, when conditions changed, became erosional.

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   The flat alluvial plain in the center of the photograph formed by deposition above sea level in a mountain valley by the accumulation of coarse-grained materials. It was once flat and filled the valley.

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   However, due to uplift of the Uncompahgre Plateau it is now being eroded by the same streams that formed it, and it will slowly, over a long period of time, erode away.
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   I think it would help if Faith could let us know if this makes sense to her and whether she has any questions about it.
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6. From Edge's Message 982:
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   All I'm saying is that the habitat is not lost over the whole region of a species. For an individual, yes, it would either migrate or die.
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   Returning to the example of a slowly transgressing sea, for an event so slow it passes unnoticed by the creatures inhabiting the region during their lifetimes, why would any creature have to "migrate or die"? Yes the transgression could happen fast, but it doesn't normally.
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7. From my Message 980
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   I think Faith meant that she thinks geology's views require fossils to show up in the geologic record in places other than where they lived. It needs to be understood why she believes geology thinks this.
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   Faith objected to the way others have seized on the last part of this, so just to state it clearly again, Faith thinks the views of modern geology require that fossils be found in strata that do not represent where they lived. On a couple occasions Faith said the fossils would have to move around after burial. We need to understand what it is in modern geology that Faith thinks forces this requirement.
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   I think the discussion about whether a landscape of net deposition becomes uninhabitable would help resolve this.