Geology- working up from basic principles.

I've read a fair few discussions on geology, and whether what we see is the result of eons of slow deposition or a rapid global flood a few thousand years ago, and I've also seen the various arguements used to undermine conventional geology and promote flood geology.Many discussions seem to get nowhere, often based on misunderstandings or ignorance of how geology works and how geologists come to te conclusions that they do. They also seem to focus on single examples, for example a polystrate fossil or an alleged footprint.To combat this, I'd like to have a discussion which starts out with some of geology's basic principles, and once these have been satisfactorally dealt with, we will work up to discussing how certain rocks can form and what they can tell us about their environment, and then on to how we can read sequences of rocks to gain an understanding of change in conditions through time and space.The first thing I would like to deal with is the law of superposition. This states that sedimentary layers form in a time progressive sequence with the oldest layers at the bottom and the youngest on the top. To view this simply, picture stacking books one on top of the other- the book you put down first will by at the bottom of the pile, and the book you put down last will be at the top. Can we agree this principle is sound?

Hi Matt,While I am promoting your topic you may want to look at a thread we had running a while back.
Exploring the Grand Canyon, from the bottom up.No dates were being used in this thread, only discussion of processes in the formation of the layers of the Grand Canyon.

Thread copied to the Geology- working up from basic principles. thread in the Geology and the Great Flood forum, this copy of the thread has been closed.