Did the Flood really happen?

In some places yes, in others there would be erosion of exposed surfaces. This would apply to most areas not covered by the inland seas. Because what you are really talking about is the geological time scale as shown by the various age rocks found in various places. These strata can vary extensively in depth from place to place, down to zero thickness where there is net erosion. They can also vary in type of rock in different locations.Thus there is no single "Geological Column" that extends around the world, there are a series of local geological columns showing the local depositions for the geological ages involved: it is a time scale you are talking about. Except where it is discontinuous (per previous comment) it is continuous with other strata of the period or geological time zone. That's like the current surface of the earth is continuous around the globe.Certainly the fossils are of the same age. Because what you are really talking about is the geological time scale as shown by the various age rocks in various places. Which is what the evidence (details, Faith) show. That it is consistent with the ToE only shows the validity of the ToE in it's ability to explain the natural history of life on earth. The layers are continuous where the depositions from the inland seas are continuous, as shown by the maps for the different age depositions distributions. False. Nor was it intended to show that, it was intended to show you that a lake bottom can be flat flat flat.A point you seem to miss entirely. If you want honesty, you need to start accepting the honesty of the evidence in the details, not just what fits your fantasies.It seems you can't handle the truth, you continually shy away from it.Enjoy

But there can be many different sedimentary deposits with the same fossils. That doesn't make the rocks the same deposition, it just makes them the same age. Yes, but then there are six sentences about other things. The next sentence resets the context of "sequences" to be "The sequence of the microscopic fossils ... " followed immediately by the sentence "The same sequence is found in America, Europe, and anywhere that detailed studies have been made."Further the two sentences before this states "The science has become a very exact one. Millions of dollars are spent in drilling, with the paleontological findings of the company geologists taken as the basis for the work."The paleontological findings are the fossils, the index fossils of interest to the oil companies. Reading comprehension. No
they
aren'tThe time periods are "continuous," in the sense they are the same around the world. The rocks laid down in those time periods are the same age/s, but that doesn't mean the rock layers are continuous. Those geological time periods cover large slices of time, so you can have several depositions at different times within those geological time periods. People looking for honest evaluation of the evidence perhaps?Different sediments show different deposition events or processes rather than a continuous process -- in fact it is evidence against a continuous process, such as would be the result of flood waters. Except that it doesn't ... unless you ignore the details. Claiming it does is not showing how a flood can drop one type of sedimentary deposit (say clay for example) and then change to a different type of sedimentary deposit (say sand for example). This is a problem that you have yet to explain ... along with all the other sorting problems your fantasy model has. Then stop spreading it.

To expand further on the points made in Message 1508, there is an essential element to the geological column time scale.Let's start with a typical creationist approach: Geologic Column | Answers in Genesis

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William Smith first used the similarity of fossils to construct detailed geologic maps across wide areas. He used fossils to map and correlate rock layers and constructed the first geologic map of England and Wales in 1815. Smith was a creationist who believed in the old-earth view now known as progressive creationism. By the early 1800s the idea of an old earth was popular, though the idea of a global flood was still used to explain many geologic deposits.

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The standard geologic column was constructed by combining descriptions of local areas to form a composite record. By 1885 the finer divisions of the column had been identified based on the principles established by Steno, Smith, and Lyell. These ideas were also beginning to impact the study of biology, and Lyell’s long-age ideas played a major role in Darwin’s development of the theory of biological evolution over vast geologic eras.

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Index fossils played an important role in the development of the geologic column. The idea that life became increasingly complex over time, whether by some evolutionary force or continuous creation by God, was used to analyze the fossils in the rock layers. It was assumed that by identifying the order of fossil succession, the layers could be correlated from one region to the next. Index fossils are still one of the major indicators of the age of a given layer. Shelled creatures such as ammonites and mollusks are the most commonly used index fossils.

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The geologic timescale we know today was not added to the column until after the development of radiometric dating techniques. Lyell and others had promoted the idea of millions of years of geologic history, but dates were not assigned to given layers until much later. Working on the assumptions of naturalism and uniformitarianism, the rock record was interpreted from these starting points. By the time radiometric dating techniques were implemented, the idea of millions of years of earth history had already become an established scientific fact. Using uniformitarian assumptions (see the discussion in chapter 4), the radiometric dating techniques are put forward as support for the timescale of the standard geologic column.

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Which by and large is a fairly honest presentation of the history and development of the Composite Geological Column aka Time Scale (note that the vertical axis is years rather than types of rock). Note that radiometric techniques/data confirm the consistent ages of index fossils, because they have the same level ratios of parent/daughter, whether you accept the age calculation or not. Thus they also confirm the relative ages of the rocks in the assembled time scale.The consilience of data from all the different sources show an ordered structure of sedimentary rocks building up over time from the distant past to the present (and continuing today). A sequence of rocks that is then associated with time by the sequence of fossils, fossils that exist around the world at each time period ... index fossils. This statement is confused at best, "the rocks are continuous, who cares if they aren't the same rocks" is what I read from it, and this implys that you mean something else by "the rocks" than what it sounds like.What we can (hopefully) agree on, broadly speaking, is that the individual layers of sedimentary rocks are the same approximate age, made from sediment deposited in roughly the same time period, thus they can be a composite of different sedimentary formations in different locations but all of that same time period. That makes sense to me.Now, returning to the diagram above we see that the time periods are measured in millions of years and we can combine this with the maps provided by HBD Message 448). So let me summarize them together for easy visual comparison, with the time periods from the Geological Time Scale added from Answers in Genesis above: Now it is rather unlikely that the patterns of the inland seas changed abruptly, and there must have been some transition from one to the next, a transition that would leave sedimentary deposits of slightly different ages and types and coming from different sources as the erosion patterns changed. As long as they fall within the time scale for the Devonian period, they would all be classified as Devonian sediment rocks.Thus you could have sediments deposited at different times, still classified as Devonian, but from different sources, ie -- not a continuous rock formation, just all within the Devonian period, and similar transition periods throughout the other geological time periods.These transitions would take time, because we know from fossil evidence that mature marine ecosystems were formed in each of the pertinent life zones for sea and shoreline habitats. After all that's how the index fossils get deposited in the sediments.Indeed we know from Walther's Law that you would likely have silts, clays, sand deposits, etc all forming at the same time with transgressions and regressions -- different rocks being then form from these deposits as time passes. The siltstones would not be continuous across the area, the shale (from clay) would not be continuous across the area and the sandstones would not be continuous across the area.Indeed, I see that what is now Wyoming is not covered at all in the Silurian period, but it is in the other maps, so the Silurian rocks would not be continuous over Wyoming.The argument that the rocks are large continuous slabs is patently false, there is no single layer of only one type of stone all formed at one time.The details show the difference between fantasy and reality.Enjoy

Good idea, I'll move my off-topic post from Any practical use for Universal Common Ancestor? as well: Edited by RAZD, : .

Except we can break the prehistoric geological past "ONE TIME events" into details that are repeatable:

• Sedimentation rates of different sources (gravels, sands, silts, clays)
• Changing deposition with distance from shore (Waltham's Law)
• Aquatic life and death cycles with seasons (diatoms, forams, algaes, etc)
• Erosion of river banks
• Local floods covering extensive areas
• Erosion when dams break
• etc

We can look at these processes today and compare the results with the geological/fossil evidence to see similarities and differences. The more similarities we see (and we do see many) the more confident we can be that the processes are occurring today in much the same manner as they did in the past.These are "measuruable AND REPEATABLE effects" and this why we KNOW that you can't get alternating varve layers from flood waters, with layers formed from alternating light (diatom, foraminifera) layers and dark clay layers. The settling rates of these materials makes it unworkable. Especially when you get to the 6 million pair varve layers of the Green River Formation.

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Stratigraphic Cross Sections of the Eocene Green River Formation in the Green River Basin, Southwestern Wyoming, Northwestern Colorado, and Northeastern Utah

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see Figure 1.Structure map of the Greater Green River Basin, southwestern Wyoming and adjacent areas, showing major basinal areas and adjoining uplifts. Modified after Johnson and others (2005).

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So yes, we can replicate the specifics, the sedimentation of clays and shell fossils and show that they need time to settle individually. And we can match the fossils of shells/tests to seasonal growth in lakes and ponds today, as well as to the influx of clays and silts after the season of growth ends. The details that make these annual layers.It's the details Faith.Enjoy

No, the layers don’t represent time periods. They represent past sedimentation events, accumulating over time, yes, but at different times in different places.They get grouped into geological time periods for our convenience in discussing them, and these groupings are arbitrary ... unless there is some cataclysmic event that provides a relatively clear boundary, like an extinction event as happened several different times. The last such event was due to a meteor strike, identifiable by the iridium layer. We identify rocks by their land of origin by the types of rocks and their chemical signatures when possible. Sands, silts and clays are difficult to do. Boulders are easier, volcanic ash/lava are easier still.But we also know that sands, silts and clays are transported downhill from mountains and hills that are being eroded.That’s what the evidence and the details show.Enjoy

No, their relative positions show relative passage of time. There are sandstones in different geological eras, there are siltstones in different geological eras, there are shales in different geological eras. The rocks do not define the geological eras. There are even multiple layers of the same types of rock within the geological eras. They just happen to be the assortment of sediments that were deposited at various locations at various times by the geological processes of erosion, transportation and deposition.The time periods had nothing to do with their deposition, because they were defined long after all those depositions were complete. And look at how many sandstone layers there are, look at how many siltstone layers there are, look at how many layers of mudstone there are, and look at how many layers of clay there are. If I pick up a loose piece of sandstone lying at the bottom, can you tell me what time zone it came from, just from the rock? No. You need additional data to determine that. What problem is that? Something you made up?There are lots of overlaps up and down the canyon, with the same basic rock types repeated and repeated and repeated.What defines the ages is not the rocks, but -- initially -- the relative location of layer on top of layer on top of layer, and the knowledge gained from Steno's Law:

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The law of superposition is an axiom that forms one of the bases of the sciences of geology, archaeology, and other fields dealing with geological stratigraphy. It is a form of relative dating. In its plainest form, it states that in undeformed stratigraphic sequences, the oldest strata will be at the bottom of the sequence. This is important to stratigraphic dating, which assumes that the law of superposition holds true and that an object cannot be older than the materials of which it is composed.

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The law of superposition was first proposed in 1669 by the Danish scientist Nicolas Steno.[1] In the English-language literature, the law was popularized by William "Strata" Smith, who used it to produce the first geologic map of Britain.[2] It is the first of Smith's laws.

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People knew about this relative timing in 1669, Faith. It's not rocket science.What defines the ages now is still not the rocks, it is the radiometric dating systems. Something you can't see looking with your eyes.But what really defines -- differentiates -- the rock layers is the fossils they contain: that is what allows people to ascertain the geological era of a rock without knowing the relative positioning or radiometric data. This data easily differentiates rock layers that are of the same basic type into different eras. No, Faith, the ToE works because the evidence supports it, and the ToE provides the best known explanation for the evidence.The layers of rock show an increase in the complexity of life from simple single cell life forms to today's animals and plants, with some backing and filling for extinction events. Not one has done so to date. Many have tried, many have failed. There is not one creationist "explanation" that covers the full breadth and depth of the fossil record in the detail that the ToE does. Not ONE.That detailed depth and breadth of all the evidence known in the spatial-temporal matrix also shows that a mythic global flood is a delusion, a fantasy, a hoary myth. The overwhelming evidence says no, it did not happen, there was no flood of that scale in the natural history of the 4.5+ billion year old earth.Enjoy

whoop topic change ...Why on your bizarro world is that a problem?The point has always been that there were living things -- the sources of all those fossils -- on what were once submerged marine environments. Sediments fall down through the water and cover the ocean floor (their type depending on how far from shore they are and their settling rates). Those sediments gradually build up on the ocean/sea/lake floors and the living animals hardly notice as they move about and grow, but the shells and skeletal remains gradually get buried. Year after year, decade after decade, century after century, millennia after millennia ...This is a continually ongoing process, it can be observed today, the rate can be measured today and compared to the rates of deposition for ancient sedimentary rocks ... and they are comparable (that, btw, is a process that has been replicated)Long after these sediments have fallen and been themselves buried the lithification process turns them to stone/rock.IE - the sediment build up around the dead remains which then get lithified encasing the dead remains. Making time capsules of the evidence of life at that time in the past where "there was once a place where there were living things" walking the earth. Why on your bizarro world would you think that?This is part of the reason that the rocks are not the time periods. The time periods are arbitrary delineages of the past. Rocks that were laid down as sediments during those arbitrary time periods become rocks of those periods. The top of the rock/s designated as rocks from time "period A" then form the base for the further deposition to be called rocks from "period B" and so on.This is a continuous process of sediment build-up, life forms living on the surface shifting up as the sediment builds up, leaving behind the remnants of dead life. Life from "period A" continues on the surfaces of the sediments, and when the time passes that the deposition now is called "period B" the life is still living on the surface. These "period B" sediments don't cap off "period A" trapping and condensing it ... to explain further, let's replicate this with anEXPERIMENT:

1. Take an aquarium
2. Place it outside (where it can overflow)
3. Fill it with water
4. Take a handful of dirt (or diatomaceous earth)
5. Sprinkle it over the water
6. Let it settle
7. repeat steps 4 through 7 until the aquarium is full of wet dirt
8. Take a ruler and a sharpie and draw lines at 1" levels
9. Mark them A, B, C, etc from the bottom up
10. Observe the results:

• How did layers of different size particles form in the aquarium?
• Is it a repeating pattern of coarse to fine particles in those layers?
• How did the sets of coarse and fine particle layers come to be inside layer A? layer B? etc
• How did these sediment particles come to "occupy" layer A? layer B? etc
• Do the layers A, B, C, etc of particles represent the passage of time?
• Do the different paired layers of fine particles and coarse particles represent the passage of time?
• If the fine particle layers represented winters, and the coarse layers represent summers, how many "years" would have passed to fill the aquarium?

Time, and simple geological processes, can do amazing things while seeming to be doing nothing.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .

See Message 1591 answer/s to Message 1578EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .

It's not rock at the time, it is sediment, different types of sediment depending on the deposition environment, but gradually accumulating sediment. Have you ever walked in a snowstorm? As you walk you keep stepping on the top surface of the snow. In the same way things die in the world today -- old age, disease, predation -- but there are also survivors that live, adapting to the new surface just as a person walking in a snowstorm adapts to the new surface.Individuals die, but the population does not go extinct. Generation by generation they adapt to the changing surface.Animal life-forms adapt to the new surface by walking on it and starting new animal growth.Plant life-forms adapt to the new surface by growing up and starting new plant growth.This is why we find fossils of Brachiopods with their stalks attached to shells of older Brachiopods.And all life forms can continue to reproduce ... during periods of normal deposition over time, such as what we experience today. It certainly is not burying people and plants and animals in most sectors of the earth All life forms do continue to reproduce and pass on their genes.It is only in special cases where the rate of deposition is too large to adapt to it that there are mass killings -- such as when Vesuvius erupted and buried Pompeii, but those are special cases. Message 1579 replies: Why? You added a handful of dirt to the aquarium, how does that affect what is living inside? Would goldfish just fall down dead? Would seaweed just stop living? No they wouldn't, and neither is the ongoing life on the earth killed off by the current depositions occurring today.What effect would a second handful of dirt make? Answers with details Faith, not assertions.Note that this experiment has been carried out many times and it doesn't result in the death of all living things in the tank. Much of it escapes with the water overflowing out of the tank (or ponds), other life forms adapt. Some die, but reproduce beforehand and the offspring survive -- new plant life sets roots into the new layers for instance.The ecological succession of a pond to a bog to a meadow is due to the accumulation of silts and sands in the pond over time, the life adapts. But not the dead things that died of old age, disease or predation, their remnants would be gradually buried by the accumulating sediments and become fossils, preserving a record of life at that point in time of deposition/sedimentation.Yes, generation by generation the living species would adapt to the new surface, living, surviving, reproducing, and as the individuals die of old age, disease or predation, their remnants would be gradually buried by the accumulating sediments, preserving a record of life at that point in time of deposition/sedimentation. One that is slightly different from the ones below, as we have seen from studying the evidence.Yes, they get "displaced" generation by generation by generation, gradually upward, to live, survive, and breed on a new surface made by the deposition of sediment, leaving behind the remnants of those that died, gradually being buried by the sediment. Just as you can continue to walk on the new surface of snow in a snowstorm, and if you drop something it gets buried by the snow, your steps get buried, but you are still walking on top, on the surface environment, you are still living. Such is the case for all living things even today, when you die you no longer pass on your genes, but that doesn't mean that you never have does it? Individuals in each generation survives, reproduces and dies while succeeding generations continue to survive and reproduce, generation after generation. Adapting to the new environment as they do.Do you know what "Marine Snow" is?

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In the deep ocean, marine snow is a continuous shower of mostly organic detritus falling from the upper layers of the water column. It is a significant means of exporting energy from the light-rich photic zone to the aphotic zone below which is referred to as the biological pump. Export production is the amount of organic matter produced in the ocean by primary production that is not recycled (remineralised) before it sinks into the aphotic zone. Because of the role of export production in the ocean's biological pump, it is typically measured in units of carbon (e.g. mg C m^‘2 d^‘1).The term was first coined by the explorer William Beebe as he observed it from his bathysphere. As the origin of marine snow lies in activities within the productive photic zone, the prevalence of marine snow changes with seasonal fluctuations in photosynthetic activity and ocean currents. Marine snow can be an important food source for organisms living in the aphotic zone, particularly for organisms which live very deep in the water column.

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Do you remember the Pelagic/Calcareous (Coccolith/Foram) Ooze from Walther's Law diagrams? That is the accumulation of Marine Snow over time. It settles very slowly compared to the other sediments. This Walther's Law image also shows the sediments sorted by grain size with the largest grain sediments at the shore edge and the finest grain size sediments in the deep ocean furthest away from the shore.Note that a mature shoreline would mean that each of these fascies are present, together with the evidence of life forms associated with them, from shore life to intertidal life, to shallow water life to deep water life.Time is why, real time extending billions of years into the past. The earth is very very very old. Get used to it.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .Edited by RAZD, : .