Summations Only

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.

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.

I think Faith understands this, though she might disagree that it happens. I believe she's saying something else, that modern geology doesn't realize that its interpretations require that fossils move around between layers while still buried. It would be helpful if Faith could verify if this is accurate, and if it is to explain the rationale.

Just one suggestion for today. This is from Faith's Message 999: Faith is describing the point in time when the original landscape has become buried under 40 feet of additional material, is under great pressure, and has begun to lithify, and she correctly concludes that the layers just above would also have begun to lithify, though to a lesser degree. But after thinking about it she concludes that these layers just above the first layer would "have to be eliminated at some point." It needs to be understood why Faith thinks this.

Just a few today:

1. Please leave the analyses of who's to blame for end-of-thread summaries, or better, don't play the blame game at all. Keep your attention on the topic.
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2. I felt that Edge's Message 1007, while not untrue, left the impression that the scenario being pushed by Stile and myself as a way of illustrating why an landscape of net deposition doesn't become uninhabitable can't happen:
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   edge in Message 1007 writes:

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   What rock are you talking about? The rock that came before the landscape may have nothing to do with the landscape, and what came afterward may be completely different as well. The landscape, as we are defining it now, could be different from both. You could have a coal bed sitting on granite bedrock and overlain by a transgressive marine sandstone.

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   "Noting what's in the rock" is not relevant at all.
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   That last sentence seemed particularly likely to mislead readers. What we find in the strata is how we reconstruct what landscapes must have been like, whether deserts or lakes or lagoons or swamps or beaches or coastal shores or shallow seas and so forth. Sometimes the strata do not contain enough evidence to do this, and sometimes they do. Stile's scenario is currently focused on lithification, but he'll eventually address how evidence of what the landscape looked like becomes buried and preserved.
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3. In Message 1012 PaulK addressed Faith's claim that the upper layers in Stile's scenario were only present to provide pressure to lithify the lower layers and so would have to be eroded away. I think it could help us develop a better understanding of why Faith thinks this if she could reply to this message.

This from your Message 936 is one example: Rephrasing this, you seem to be saying that the surface environment is always an eroded surface. But only an unconformity can be an eroded surface. Any paleosols recorded in a stratigraphic column must have been been net depositional surfaces for considerable periods, else paleosols wouldn't exist.Thanks for this illustration: Now I understand what you meant by soils accumulating from the top and bottom of the profile. Soil layers grind slowly across underlying strata like glaciers down a mountain rangeLooking about me here in New Hampshire, if the trees on our hillsides are any indicator, our hills don't do this on any visible scale. The trees on our hillsides all grow straight and true, including the fast growing white pine. I assume this is because our soil is compacted and rocky and full of clays. To plant a shrub near the woods around the perimeter of the yard it takes a pick to get into the soil - shovels won't do it. And be prepared to abandon the hole because of what starts as a small rock but with more digging becomes immense. When we built our house we had a pile of rocks from the peripheral landscaping that we piled into a mound ten feet in diameter and four feet high. Our neighbor later used them to help build a stone wall, and of course most of New England is full of stone walls running through woods that were once fields and pastures.What puts so much rock and clay into the soil? We were glaciated for a considerable time, maybe a factor? If you're kind enough to answer this, probably better addressed over at How do geologist know what they are looking at really is what they say it is?.

The thread is still trying to understand why you believe regions of net deposition or erosion must become uninhabitable.

Waiting for Stile is fine, but you might want to consider also responding to PaulK's Message 1012.

Quite a few posts yesterday, but just a short list today:

1. Let's concentrate on the topic. Please don't drift onto other topics like the Flood. Both sides should be presenting the evidence behind their positions. When it is felt that an argument is imaginary or illusory or absurd then deal with the evidence offered in support of the argument. "Your position is absurd" is not an argument. Please don't make arguments unsupported by evidence or counterarguments that ignore the evidence.
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2. From Faith in Message 1040:
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   Faith in Message 1040 writes:

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   Millions of years would simply wipe out all living things.
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   As Edge noted later, this is an empty assertion. If part of the basis for Faith's belief that the views of modern geology are absurd is in part based upon the belief that the passage of too much time like millions of years would "simply wipe out all living things" then the evidence and rationale behind this belief should be presented.
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3. From Jar's Message 1041:
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   jar in Message 1041 writes:

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   Faith writes:

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   Walther's Law produces an ordered series of alternating layers types and Walther's Law is consistent with the idea of Flood water rising and receding.

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   Unfortunately Walther's Law does NOT explain the ordered sequences found in reality.
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   Walther's Law explains the layers created by sequences of sea transgressions and regressions. I think what Jar meant is that Walther's Law doesn't work the way Faith thinks it works.

Not many posts since yesterday, here are some observations and suggestions:

1. They may have gone unnoticed, but I did issue a few very short suspensions over the past week. Please refrain from personal comments and concentrate your attention on the topic.
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2. Neither the Flood nor the Bible are the topic.
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3. In Message 1067 Faith explained that evolutionary change is why she believes that "Millions of years would simply wipe out all living things." But as noted in Message 1069, Faith's reasons provided no support for the assertion that evolutionary change causes life to die away. For example, the lizards of Pod Mrčaru have changed on a human time scale from their ancestors on Pod Kopite but show no signs of dying away.
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   But more importantly this is a geological thread, not an evolutionary one. I assumed Faith had a geological cause in mind that would wipe out all life after millions of years, something related to her earlier claim that a region of net deposition would eventually become uninhabitable. If she has no geological justification then the argument that millions of years would wipe out all life should be dropped from this thread.
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4. From Faith's Message 1071:
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   Faith in Message 1071 writes:

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   jar writes:

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   The nearly 40 major sedimentary rock layers exposed in the Grand Canyon and in the Grand Canyon National Park area range in age from about 200 million to nearly 2 billion years old.

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   See, just flat-out statement as if it were fact. It isn't fact and it can't be fact,...As I pointed out there isn't the slightest observable evidence in the strata of any degree of difference in age whatever.
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   This subtopic is more appropriate for a thread in the Dates and Dating forum, but the part about not being a fact is deserving of some attention. At the Grand Canyon it is fact that the proportions of various radiometric elements vary in a consistent and ordered fashion from layer to layer, and great age along with increasing age with depth is a scientific explanation that fits the facts. Faith isn't being asked to accept the facts or the conclusions, just understand them. Merely denigrating them and casting aspersions accomplishes nothing. If she wishes to challenge any facts or conclusions she must bring her own facts and/or counterarguments.
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5. From Faith's Message 1071:
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   Faith in Message 1071 writes:

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   The "oldest" layers have no more signs of decrepitude than "younger" layers, no more erosion, no more appearance of any kind of breakdown or sagging or dissolution whatever, no more crumbling or surface erosion, nothing at all.
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   This hasn't received any attention, but it deserves some. There seem at least several things about basic geology that Faith is missing here.
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6. From Jar's Message 1072:
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   Jar in Message 1072 writes:

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   Faith writes:

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   Bla bla bla bla bla. The "warm shallow seas" are determined by the sediment of the rock and perhaps fossil contents. If the sediment was simply transported and dumped you'd never figure it out would you?

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   Of course we would which is how all of the known flood deposits have been identified. Floods do leave evidence Faith and what floods don't do is sort materials and biological samples the way things exist in reality.
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   Faith didn't address this part of Jar's reply, but it deserves additional attention. Why does Faith believe that layers deposited beneath warm shallow seas would look the same as what a flood "transported and dumped"?
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7. From Faith's Message 1080:
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   Faith in Message 1080 writes:

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   This isn't the thread for it but if you want to start another to defend your contention that what you are calling a delta was ever really a delta, and why it matters whether it was a delta or not, I'd be interested.
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   This thread would be fine for this discussion.

Today's comments and requests:

1. From PaulK's Message 1085 responding to me:
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   PaulK in Message 1085 writes:

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   quote:

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   At the Grand Canyon it is fact that the proportions of various radiometric elements vary in a consistent and ordered fashion from layer to layer, and great age along with increasing age with depth is a scientific explanation that fits the facts

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   I believe that this is an oversimplification - generally sedimentary rocks are not datable by radiometric methods. The dates are obtained from igneous rocks, and the age of sedimentary rocks is inferred from the relationship between rocks.
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   PaulK is correct that sedimentary rocks are not directly radiometrically datable. To get an absolute age range a sedimentary layer would have to be bracketed above and below by radiometrically dateable layers, such as igneous or metamorphic rock or volcanic basalt or ash, a circumstance not present at the Grand Canyon for layers above the supergroup. Intrusions can also help bracket the date, another circumstance I don't think is present at the Grand Canyon for those layers.
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   For sedimentary layers where absolute dating techniques cannot be applied geologists rely upon correlating index fossils with the geologic timescale, in part established using sedimentary layers existing in circumstances where absolute dating techniques could be applied. This is only accurate within millions of years, which is fine on a geologic timescale. I checked a few online sources, and they all say that this is the best that has been done for the sedimentary layers of the Grand Canyon above the supergroup (such as this from the National Parks Service: The Grand Age of Rocks: The Numeric Ages for Rocks Exposed within Grand Canyon).
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2. From Faith's Message 1089:
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   Faith in Message 1089 writes:

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   Epistemopathy. That’s a term that was used by a "maverick" psychologist back in the sixties with the wit and the insight to expose the field of Psychology as generally sick with "epistemopathology, " suffering from symptoms that would in any other context be considered schizophrenia. The term just popped into my head to describe historical geology. Psychology of course is an interpretive science that can't be proved, just as historical geology is...etc...
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   This is the kind of name calling that could only justifiably follow a scathing presentation and analysis of evidence showing the other side's position severely wrongheaded, which was noticeably absent. Let's please skip the name calling and focus on the evidence. If a discussion ignores evidence then what is left but name calling, with each side yelling "No, you're stupid" at the other.
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   I encourage both sides to let evidence guide the discussion.
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3. From Edge's Message 1093:
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   edge in Message 1093 writes:

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   So then, all you need to do is prove that the interpretations are not factual.
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   While I would probably say "show" instead of "prove," this pretty much echos my own feelings. If someone's interpretations of the evidence are wrong then it must be explained how they are wrong.
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   PaulK says pretty much the same thing in Message 1095:
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   PaulK in Message 1095 writes:

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   Every fact about the observable world is an interpretation.

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   Nobody...sticks to purely relaying fact without interpretation.

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   [The] claim...that the evidence is insufficient to justify conclusions...needs to be justified.
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4. From Minnemooseus's Message 1096:
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   Minnemooseus in Message 1096 writes:

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   Sure they work. That's because you consistently confuse the physical level of a rock -- or its depth or position in the geologic column -- with the ridiculous ancient age you assign to it. The level is all you need to know, the age is a lie.

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   I think there is substantial truth to Faith's statement, although having absolute dating methods sure does help in tying the "picture" together.
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   Even after reading to the end of Minnemooseus's post, which contained some valuable explanations, I couldn't pinpoint where the "substantial truth" lay. If Faith is correct that geologists are in some way confusing "depth or position in the geologic column" with age then it would be helpful to know what that is.
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5. From Faith's Message 1097:
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   Faith in Message 1097 writes:

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   No, you should make it clear that it is an interpretation instead of describing it as if it were a fact.
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   As Edge and PaulK said earlier, it's all interpretation on both sides, and as PaulK points out in Message 1100, Faith does this herself.
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   People needn't litter their messages with repeated declarations that they're interpreting facts. Both sides should be interpreting facts and explaining how their interpretations are superior to others.
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   Next Faith says:
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   There is no way I know of to prove an interpretation is not factual.
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   To demonstrate an interpretation wrong one merely shows it doesn't align with the evidence. Scientific interpretations of evidence become accepted when they're convincing enough to build a consensus.
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6. From Faith's Message 1098:
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   Faith in Message 1098 writes:

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   Of course I can't help myself, I have to think in terms of shorter time periods about everything, and I suspect that rocks that are said to require great heat and pressure requiring huge amounts of time, probably don't need that much time. For instance, I believe the schist and the granite at the base of the Grand Canyon probably formed quite rapidly...etc...
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   This thread shouldn't become another Flood discussion. It's about accurately communicating the views of modern geology.

Short list today:

1. This thread is not about the flood. I'll be issuing very short suspensions to those posting flood messages, just to get their attention in case they're skipping my messages.
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2. From Faith's Message 1105:
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   Faith in Message 1105 writes:

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   You are calling a general critique of the thinking in a field "name calling?"
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   Faith's has repeated this "general critique" many times, and this time she gave it a name, but "epistemopathy" is not the topic. My actual request to Faith was to focus on the topic and to critiques of the interpretations of evidence she thinks are wrong.
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3. From Faith's Message 1118:
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   Faith in Message 1118 writes:

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   I realized that the situation Stile is describing has nothing to do with Walther's Law anyway, since that applies to sediments deposited by changing sea levels. He is talking about ocean transgressing over, or into, a sedimentary accumulation that was deposited by terrestrial means.
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   Since Stile's scenario has advanced to the point of a transgressing sea, and since Walther's Law explains the stratigraphy resulting from transgressing and regressing seas, and since Faith doesn't think Walther's Law applies to transgressions onto terrestrial sedimentary layers, I think there should be more discussion about Walther's Law in order to bring about a mutual understanding.

Just a short note clarifying one thing today. In Message 1136 Faith said: It is environments that are side-by-side, not sedimentary layers. In the case of Walther's Law the coastline is the boundary between side-by-side terrestrial and marine environments. The movement of coastlines back and forth across land, transgressions and regressions, results in a familiar pattern of nearly horizontal sedimentary deposits. The movement is a necessarily slow process as it takes time for sediments to accumulate to the depths we see recorded in strata like those of the Grand Canyon.

Just as I did over in the Glenn Morton's Evidence Examined thread (see Message 314, 2nd paragraph), I'll be moving to a more assertive approach in this thread. Again, you are responsible for managing your own discussion. You and Edge have been engaged in a back-and-forth, and you're expected to be able to follow the thread of your own discussions. You just earlier broke off a discussion with NoNukes pleading inability to follow your own discussion, and now you're doing it with Edge. You will not be permitted to keep breaking off discussions for this reason. Either find a way to follow your own discussions with people or stop discussing. Address the evidence presented by Edge or drop discussion of this subtopic. It is fair to ask Edge to repeat his evidence and argument, or to provide a link to the message containing it. To Edge I would ask that he make sure his arguments eschew brevity that might hinder understanding.

I'd like to lay out the main point more clearly, because I think the sarcasm of Message 1151 that introduced this part of the discussion may have obscured it. Please correct as necessary.According to Faith, floods deposit flat strata. Mars has strata deposited in flat layers just like Earth, as shown in these images: Therefore there must have been a global flood on Mars, but in Message 1153 Faith says: In Message 1155 Glowby challenges Faith to describe how she is differentiating between Martian and terrestrial strata, and you challenge her statement in Message 1157, but Faith ignores Glowby and sidesteps you in her reply. You're now challenging her again, and I'd like to see Faith reply and directly address this issue.Interesting side note: the top portion of the second image looks a lot like Siccar Point, here are images side-by-side: