Summations Only

Again, to all appearances, you conflate terrestrial deposits with marine deposits.

As long as it is considered to be an "environment" in which creatures lived I don't see a problem.

The eolian sandstones of the Jurassic do not have nearly the extent of formations such as the Tapeats or the great Paleozoic limetstones of North America. That is because they are terrestrial.

I guess that makes sense on your paradigm. On mine the Flood was running out of material for forming layers since the terrestrial formations are much higher than the marine formations.

hing with the Claron where I spent much of the last two days. It is not continental in scale.

The Claron as seen on that cross section of the Grand Staircase/Grand Canyon area is just a tiny piece of its former self, having been severely truncated to become uppermost cliff in the Grand Staircase. But of course being so high in the column it probably was much smaller in scale than the others anyway.

What fun to be up there though. I hope you are enjoying your time.

And neither are many of the formations that Percy has provided to you from the lower peninsula of Michigan.

I ignore a lot of Percy's stuff, sorry, but so much of it is nonsensical anyway..

They are smaller in extent and do preserve landscapes that you are so hung up on. Some, such as the Hell Creek Formation contain abundant dinosaur fauna.

"Preserve landscapes???" You mean dead dinosaurs constitute a "landscape?" What?

Over on the thread about science and religion Tangle is talking to ICANT about his view of the Flood in Message 28. I don't want to get into that conversation but the topic belongs here anyway:

Tangle writes: Second I would expect to see evidence of such a massive and recent global event everywhere in the strata. But we don't see it. What we DO see are many local flood events.

Uh. Strata. ALL the strata of the Geo/Strat Columns. ALL. And fossils galore, all the dead things the Flood was intended to bring about. SO much evidence.

Similarly, we'd expect to see a genetic bottleneck in every species of plant and animal on earth - we don't. Nor do we see any interuption in man's societies spanning the supposed time of this flood.

I've answered this a bajillion times but not on this thread yet so I'll put it here too:

The bottleneck does show up in the genome of every creature but not in a way we would expect to see it, because today it would cause severe genetic depletion in a creature, meaning so much homozygosity/fixed loci there is no way for it to continue to vary genetically. Examples are the cheetah and the elephant seal.

But a dramatic reduction in genetic diversity would have to have occurred because of the Flood bottleneck too, only because the genetic diversity was so enormous in the pre-Flood world it left enough diversity for all the creatures to continue to vary to the extent of evolving all the species alive today, and NOW we are getting enough genetic depletion in some lineages to threaten them with extinction.

What would have happened is a great increase in homozygosity (and I think the production of all the junk DNA too, the death of a huge number of genes because of the increase in homozygosity, making the junk DNA itself evidence for the Flood). Homozygosity is the result of genetic reduction, but there easn't enough for us to notice because it was merely a limiting of the potential for variation, not the cessation we see in the cheetah and the elephant seal, and the limiting allowed all the variation we see today so in our frame of reference we'd have no basis for considering it a reduction at all.

We accept the current level of homozygosity as normal as well as the huge amount of junk DNA, just as we accept the strata and fossils as somehow producible by normal processes instead of the evidence they are for the Flood's devastation of the earth and all living things.

I've mentioned that I think the enormous variety of the trilobites in the fossil record show the huge genetic diversity that existed before the Flood in all species/Kinds, the trilobites being a special case because so many of them appear in the fossil record, allowing us to see that great diversity.

But over time the very processes of evolution (mostly anything that reproductively isolates a portion of the greater population of any creature) the prpcesses that bring about all that variety, all the breeds and races of all the creatures, also bring about reduced genetic diversity in each race or breed so that ultimately they could potentially reach the same point of genetic depletion as the cheetah or the elephant seal just through those normal processes, I've called this evolution defeating evolution, since obviously if evolution brings about reduced genetic diversity it is going in the opposite direction of what the ToE requires to keep on producing new species, it ultimately brings evolution to a natural end.

The answer I always get to this is that mutation prevents the reduction in genetic diversity from happening. But for various reasons it doesn't and it can't. I'm not up to this argument right now.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Percy writes: Gen 6:17 writes: And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die. Bible interpretations can be argued endlessly because so much is ambiguous. Does God say in Gen 6:17 that he will kill all land life, or all life period.

There is no doubt disagreement about this among theologians though I'm not up on it and I don't think it matters much anyway. A great deal of sea life also died in the Flood so I won't argue against the idea that it could be included in genesis 6:17 though I think my interpretation is the more common one.

I'll get to that in a minute. First, to build my argument, I need to interject that Genesis mentions only man, among all life, as receiving the "breath of life": Gen 2:7 writes: Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. But even though the Bible doesn't mention it, your interpretation of Gen 6:17 seems fair: Faith writes: All flesh wherein is the "breath of life" is taken to refer to animals on the land that breathe the air. And Gen 6:17 seems to encourage that interpretation, except that it feels like it's leaving something out. Fish and whales and dolphins and seals and manatees and walruses and crustaceans are also living beings, but not on land. And then there's bacteria and protozoa and fungus (neither animal nor vegetable) and so on. If land life required a "breath of life" to become living beings, then wouldn't fish and whales and all the rest also have required some equivalent or analogous "breath of life" to become living beings? So did water creatures and life too tiny for the Bible writers to know existed have the "breath of life" or not? Who can say?

I'm sure the theologians have plenty to say about it but I'm not up on all that. But about the tiny creatures. they would have had plenty of opportunity to survive in at least the same proportions as all other life, by hitchhiking on the ark or all kinds of stuff floating in the water, including corpses, and maybe even in the water itself in many cases. Just as the sea creatures were left to live or die in the oceans all other life that couldn't be saved on the ark would have died in huge numbers while nevertheless some survived and populated the new world.

On whichever side of that argument you fall, where Gen 6:17 says "every thing that is in the earth shall die" doesn't seem to leave a lot of wiggle room. God does seem to be saying he will wipe out all life not on the ark.

Yes, and if land animals are meant then He did just that.

He says it in other places too, for example: Gen 7:4 writes: Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”

This is probably why it's land creatures that are interpreted for Genesis 6:17 But the Bible isn't averse to hyperbole and figures of speech. I don't think we should get all nitpicky about these things. It's pretty clear that ALL land creatures DID die except for those on the ark, and that sea creatures and everything else died in huge numbers.

And later when the flood was over, the land was dry, the ark had come to rest, and Noah, his family and all the animals had disembarked, God tells Noah that he has indeed destroyed all life not on the ark: Gen 8:21 writes: And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. God clearly states he has destroyed all life, which means life both on land and in the sea.

Unless the Bible does mean life on the land exclusively for some reason and you are adding the sea creatures yourself.

But how would he have done that. For the time being we'll just assume the Flood wiped out all land life, but what about sea life? You suggested suffocation by sediment, but I've already shown there wasn't enough sediment to make a difference.

You can't "show" that, how on earth would anyone know? I still go with sediments because I know there was a lot of that.

I suggested salinity changes, but you didn't seem enamored of that possibility, and neither am I really, since many marine creatures can tolerate wide salinity ranges.

I don't know, maybe salinity levels contributed something to the mix.

And how would seals and dolphins and and whales and so forth be destroyed? They can swim and breath air and so wouldn't be much bothered.

I don't think the air was all that life-enhancing during the Flood either, at least toward the end, but even the heavy rain could have made breathing difficult when the creatures came up for air.

And then there are hippopotamuses and alligators and the like, which though more tethered to land are still very strong swimmers.

Not strong enough to survive ten months to a year in the water I'm sure.

And how would fish be destroyed that weren't bothered by salinity changes? How would lobsters and crabs and crinoids and starfish be destroyed?

Sediments, murkiness, my opinion.

But the problem of wiping out all life would have been even more difficult than that. Vast mats of floating vegetation would support all kinds of life. Did God go about zapping or in some other way destroying all life that survived this way?

Perhaps they were among the creatures that did survive on their own. Many did after all. Before the floating mats got deposited on the land and buried along with everything else anyway.

Faith writes: Some of those could be saved on the ark. Marine creatures would die on the ark but could live in the Flood water as long as it wasn't too polluted. But God claimed to have destroyed all life, which means land and sea life. How did he do that? (Minor nit: polluted is probably the wrong word.)

I think it's pretty clear by this point that "all life" didn't include sea life, for whatever reason. It would probably require some research into the cultural/philosophical views of Old Testament times to understand why not but the implication I see in the Bible is that it was land life that God was talking about.

Why all the trilobites died I don't know. Science thinks the Siberian Traps, which marked the end of the Permian when the trilobites disappeared and which had a devastating impact on the world environment, might have played a significant role.

Even if that volcanic event occurred at the end of the Flood, as most likely in my paradigm, I suppose it could have contributed to the death of the trilobites or anything else.

Faith writes: All the dinosaurs also eventually died, but in the new world after the Flood, probably because there wasn't enough vegetation to sustain them, as well as the problem of the ice age that would have killed them. What evidence tells you that trilobites did not survive the flood but dinosaurs did?

Well, doesn't everybody agree that trilobites are extinct? And as for dinosaurs they were land creatures and at least all land creatures were to be on the ark, so I have to assume they were too.

Interesting that Gen 2:7 implies that life begins at the first breath, not at conception.

But there are other parts of the Bible that point to conception and after this long post I'm not up to finding them.

"Preserve landscapes??? Topography.

How does a formation preserve a topography?

If dinosaurs lived on a landscape (your definition), would they not die there also?

But the odds of their being preserved/fossilized is extremely remote.

By the way I've been wondering why all that vegetation ended up in the Carboniferous "period" where it turned into coal, while I gather the strata in which the dinosaurs are buried don't have much vegetation though of all animals they would have needed a prodigious amount of it. There's no problem of course on the Flood model since the "Carboniferous" is merely a layer where the vegetation got deposited and not a time period, but it doesn't make a lot of sense on the Geo Time Scale model that so much is found there and not with the dinosaurs.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I do want to thank you for the compliment. In this atmosphere it means a lot to get such recognition. But since I don't trust you as far as I could throw you when it comes to your ability to read people's motives and personality, and I think you've got me all wrong on most counts, I have no reason to say anything about myself personally.

I still have at least two posts from the distant past of this thread that I hope to get around to answering, one of them yours, but beyond that I suppose I'll continue to answer whatever catches my attention that I feel like answering.

I've come to regard this thread as a sort of archives for my arguments since so many different topics have been covered if only in sketchy form. I would in fact like to take a lot of my stuff from EvC to somewhere else but that's not easy. I value it even if nobody else here does. As for my blogs, Google interfered with some things involving how they are managed so that I wish I'd never made use of Blogger.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There aren't any sags in this diagram. I was thinking of areas like the Michigan basin and the Texas/Gulf area where the cross sections clearly show the strata of many "time periods" all sagging together into a huge hammock like shape, with a very large salt layer beneath it (I hope I'm remembering this right for the Michigan area, I know it's right for the Gulf area). Many salt domes are rising up through the Gulf strata. I would like to know more about how salt behaves under various conditions and have been reading up on it some.

But in this diagram it looks to me like there isn't enough salt to cause that degree of sagging, and it also may not be the salt that caused the channel as I'd first thought. It still looks like dissolving limestone probably had a lot to do with the formation of the channels but I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it.

The way discussion between two people ideally works is that one person makes a point, the other person rebuts it, the first person rebuts the rebuttal, the other person rebuts that rebuttal, and so forth and so on. Discussion with you often doesn't work that way

You know what. The thing is I'm sick to death of constant rebutting and rebutting and rebutting. Misinterpretations, straw man rebuttals, insults galore on both sides. Sick of it. And don't call this a "discussion."

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

How does a formation preserve a topography? It buries the topography, fills in the lows until the area is flat again.

So it's not a formation at that point, it's just a lot of dirt? The dirt covers the topography and eventually flattens it out? If it fills in the lows I do kind of wonder how flattening it would happen, by which I suppose you mean flatten to the point of having a really very flat surface? Still buried? If it actually "preserved" the topography I'd expect the hills and valleys themselves to be preserved, so how is flattening it out preserving it? And how do you know any of this? By examing a rock? Are thete two different kinds of stuff in the rock, whatever the topography is composed of and whatever the stuff that flattens it is composed of? Oh but that is the formation itself? Guess I'm not picturing this.

But the odds of their being preserved/fossilized is extremely remote. Preservation is uncommon, but locally very abundant.

Oh, like where there is a muddy lake or something that dinosaurs trip and fall into? Abundantly? And is this part of the topography that got preserved or something else?

By the way I've been wondering why all that vegetation ended up in the Carboniferous "period" where it turned into coal, while I gather the strata in which the dinosaurs are buried don't have much vegetation though ... How come? We have dinosaur tracks in coal seams.

Coal seams where?

The fact that they got preserved in rapidly deposited sand bars is no freak accident.

Is "rapidly deposited sand bars" related to the coal seams or something else, and I'm sure they aren't now sand bars but something in a rock you interpret as sand bars? Is this still about dinosaurs or what?

... of all animals they would have needed a prodigious amount of it. There are plenty of plant fossils in the Cretaceous and Paleogene rocks that I have drilled.

OK thanks for the information, "plenty" of vegetation in those rocks. Probably nowhere near as much as in the Carboniferous though?

There's no problem of course on the Flood model since the "Carboniferous" is merely a layer where the vegetation got deposited and not a time period, but it doesn't make a lot of sense on the Geo Time Scale model that so much is found there and not with the dinosaurs. That is a silly notion. You are saying that entire swamps with dinosaur tracks and all, are somehow picked up by a turbulent fludde, transported on a tempestuous sea, and then gently deposited, en masse, by a receding sea in which waves don't tear up the organic mass? Not gonna work..

If there's a lot of plant life in the dinosaur era rocks that's fine with me, I had the wrong idea I guess. But again, you aren't talking about a real swamp of course, you are talking about something in a rock you interpret as formerly a swamp, right? Why do you reify such things? Why not just say exactly what you see in the rock instead of treating a mere interpretation as if it was a reality right before your eyes, as if you were describing a swamp such as exists now on the earth? That's mystification, questionable science. I have no idea what you are seeing in the rock so I have no idea how the Flood might explain its being there.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There aren't any sags in this diagram. I was thinking of areas like the Michigan basin and the Texas/Gulf area where the cross sections clearly show the strata of many "time periods" all sagging together into a huge hammock like shape, with a very large salt layer beneath it (I hope I'm remembering this right for the Michigan area, I know it's right for the Gulf area). Many salt domes are rising up through the Gulf strata. I would like to know more about how salt behaves under various conditions and have been reading up on it some. But in this diagram it looks to me like there isn't enough salt to cause that degree of sagging, There is not enough to form salt domes. For that you need a certain amount of mass to create the buoyancy necessary to penetrate the upper sediments.

Yes, thanks, I was thinking that the amount played a role in this, but more in the sagging of the strata. In fact that's a question I have, how the salt causes that sagging or subsidence?

About the formation of salt domes, I've read that it is the difference in weight between the salt and the upper strata that is the cause of the penetration of the salt up through the strata. But then I read a geology site that said that's wrong, that the salt wouldn't rise just because of that difference, or its buoyancy alone, there would have to be weak spots in the strata. Are you familiar with this controversy and what is your position on it if so?

However, you will get sags and pinches that wouldn't show up on a large cross section. On the other hand, if a large enough area of salt were dissolved, you could get some subsidence.

Is subsidence the same thing as what I'm calling sagging? And how does the dissolving of the salt cause the subsidence? I was thinking maybe the salt was originally part of the strata themselves and precipitated down through it to be collected beneath it somehow which somehow causes the sagging/subsidence? Or is it already a layer below the strata and when that dissolves the strata sink?

... and it also may not be the salt that caused the channel as I'd first thought. Likely not.

Nice to see that my thinking is in tune with geology's on a point or two.

The presence of sand channels and gravel suggest that it was stream erosion.

Because this whole diagram shows deposited flat describably single-sediment layers (as indicated by the key) and nothing that looks like earth surface into which these channels are cut, if it is best explained by streams then they must have occurred after the strata were in place.

It still looks like dissolving limestone probably had a lot to do with the formation of the channels but I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it. Usually, it is pretty easy to recognize cavern development. And it is commonly filled by clay rather than stream sediments.

Of course if clay didn't happen to be handy but sand was then wouldn't you get sand filling it? However this just keeps reminding me of the Temple Butte "riverbed" that was filled with a different limestone from that of the Redwall above it and the Muav below it. That channel was cut into limestone and so are these -- or most of them, now I'm going to have to go look at it again to be sure so I'm sure I'll be back with an edit. If it's cut into limestone that COULD suggest that some kind of chemical solvent was involved, couldn't it? But if it was just a stream then I'd assume the limestones were still wet from recent deposition at least.

Probably back with an edit soon.

ABE: OK, the channels are cut into both limestone and sand, so streams after deposition while they were still wet seems the best interpretation to me now.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I keep being amazed at how what seems to me to be a simple and merely hypothetical way of explaining something becomes the occasion for a conniption fit denouncing me in some way.

I was answering the claim that there were more sediments on the land after the Flood than before by suggesting that the oceans supplied the difference, I was thinking of the huge limestone layers in particular. I have no idea if any of your angry cogitations actually answered my guess,

And I was also answering this other claim that the land would have been too rocky to become loose sediments to fill the water and then form the strata, by suggesting that the enormous amount of vegetation thought to have characterized the pre-Flood period could have kept it loose. Deep roots for one thing should prevent lithification. You don't think so? How about all the organic matter that would have become mixed with the soil? You don't think so?

Nobody was there, after all, everything is a guess or an estimate or a speculation or a hypothetical, including your blitz of calculations. I'm doing my best to imagine what circumstances might have applied, I probably don't even consider most of it crucial to anything about the Flood. So where is your conniption fit coming from?

Not where I live now, but where I lived thirty years ago a gigantic olive tree on the edge of our yard simply fell over in the night due to heavy rain that loosened its roots from the soil. The tree was forty or fifty feet tall.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I don't treat my hypotheticals as fact, they remain scenarios intended to support the Flood model. But you describe some stuff in a rock as a swamp. I had to make4 an effort to realize you weren't talking about a real swamp but some stuff inside a rock. That's reification and mystification.

And I don't think you've noticed how much of your own methodology is really nothing more than story telling.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well that's certainly a bunch of mystification right there. Pressure and chemical reactions answer the idea that deep roots would prevent lithification? I'm listening. Tree roots break up concrete sidewalks. What are you talking about?

You say you've examined all the evidence but what evidence?

You say you've tested your hypothesis? How?

Not only is historical "science" a bunch of imaginative fairy tales, the people who support it also like to make up fairy tales about me personally. Interesting.

Personal stuff like that is against the rules but all that has just been tossed to the wind lately.

It's also a fallacy called ad hominem argument, dealing with the subject by attacking the person.

I used to like to read about the history and philosophy of science. Also books about evolution. Loved Stephen Jay Gould. I used to respect science. I still respect REAL science, but the historical sciences, evolution, historical geology, really are a lot of fairy tales.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Interesting. I guess they ran across a deposit of vegetation.

I don't have much of a summation to give, but last night I intended to answer the Message 2877 Percy asked me to read and since I tried to reply to his post and got a summation mode message I thought I couldn't post at all, which wasn't true but it derailed the attempt. Anyway I'll do that now.

He claims I don't understand the standard geological point of view, that I am "repeatedly arguing against things geology does not believe," but as I read through his post that doesn't really seem true.

Faith writes: Nothing that flat [as strata] exists on the earth's surface normally,... But this is, of course, untrue.

So this isn't a case of my not understanding what Geology says, it's just me arguing with Geology as usual, which DOES say the following:

Percy writes: Beneath the sea the abyssal plains are extremely flat and of great extent. On land even your own state has vast flat stretches, as shown in this image of Ash Meadows:

As I've looked at images of the abyssal plains I don't see the flatness of the strata represented there, but I did have the SURFACE OF THE EARTH in mind, not the sea floor, and I strenuously disagree that Ash Meadows is any kind of example of the flatness I keep talking about. It's just another of those landscapes Percy keeps putting up that bear no resemblance to the flatness of the strata and as usual I just cannot fathom why he. or Geology in general, thinks they do.

In any case, again, I'm not arguing with a straw man here, I'm arguing with what Geology apparently does really believe, if Percy is right about that anyway.

Ash Meadows:

Percy writes: This image [Ash Meadows] was offered because it is very flat,

"Flat" but far far far from the flatness of the strata.

... not because it's likely to be preserved as strata, but it could be. It depends upon what happens geologically in the future. If the region experiences no uplift then the mountains and the prairie will gradually be eroded lower and lower and disappear. A thousand or two feet of strata beneath the prairie could be eroded away over time. But maybe instead a nearby region will experience uplift, increasing deposition onto this plain and gradually burying it more and more deeply in sediment, eventually to be lithified. Uplift will at some point cease, then erosion will dominate again and the now lithified prairie will one day be exposed. Perhaps a river will deeply incise parts of the region and expose the lithified prairie as a stratum in its walls.

And if it was made of cheddar cheese you could slice it with a knife and make it as flat of the strata and save all that time.

Faith writes: There is no landscape of the sort you illustrate with photos that is anywhere near the extent of the rock formations you think could come from such land.

Still true.

Percy writes: You're connecting two different things that no one has ever suggested should be connected.

The only two things it looks to me like I'm connecting are the flatness and the extent of the strata, meaning the enormous areas of geography so many of them cover, which was the main point of my post on the formations in my Message 2833, all of which cover parts of many states in the western US. None of the photos Percy has shown cover more than a hundredth of that area.

But Percy sees a different connection I'm making:

Percy writes: In response to your assertions that none of the Earth's surface is as flat and straight as strata we have repeatedly pointed out that large portions of the Earth's surface are extremely flat, like Ash Meadows, large parts of Kansas and the abyssal plains.

And I have repeatedly answered that those examples are nowhere near the flatness of the strata and I still think the comparison indefensible. But again let me point out that this is an example where I DO get what Geology is saying, if Percy is right anyway, not where I don't get it, and I'm disagreeing with it.

But then you're making a false connection between this fact and your mistaken notion that geology believes the strata of the Grand Canyon region formed by deposition atop flat landscapes like these. No one is suggesting or has ever suggested that. We have said time and again that the strata of the Grand Canyon are the result of Walther's Law, about which I still see no indication that you understand.

Well, I think this may be wrong, as I recall a thread from years ago started by jar to discuss how each of the layers in the Grand Canyon was formed and Walther's Law was not part of any of the descriptions, it was all the usual "depositional environments" that I also object to as nothing but unprovable imagination. Walther's law didn't even come up at EvC until much more recently. However, I do think it does explain the Grand Canyon and maybe others here do too at this point.

However, I don't have the Grand Canyon particularly in mind when I'm talking about the flatness of the strata, but all the strata I've seen everywhere and I don't get why you think I'm only talking about the GC.

Here's one from West Virginia:

Very straight and flat, though perhaps not as tight contacts as some in the Grand Canyon.

And here's one from Kansas:

Pretty straight and flat to my eye, and a LOT flatter than any of those landscapes in the photos.

Then you go on to object to my connecting all this to the Geo Time Scale though you haven't brought it up yourself. It's all part of the same argument I've been making all along but I'm not up to pursuing it at the moment so I'll end this here.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.