Evidence for and against Flood theories

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"He's buggered off!!"
"So he has. He's scarpered!!
Monty Python and the Holy Grail

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I too am awaiting a response from d_yankee on a post that kind of strayed towards the flood.I reckon he must be just "yanking" our chains.PY

TheLiteralist...ta da!Don't know how well I'll do in here, but rather got suckered in a little through an unrelated thread about "The Day After Tomorrow" (my topic in the Coffee Shop).Nothing to say in particular right now as I have GOT to leave this place (been here since like midnight or something). Just wanted to give holmes a link to this thread and see if there are any answers to his reservations.Soon I'm gonna need government grant money so I can do this full time .Hi holmes. If you're interested, we'll see what "evolves" in this thread...heh!

While you're at it, you might as well write my paper for me. Been up all night writing the darn thing.

Man do I remember THOSE days! Hopefully I will never have to write a paper ever again. I have a younger sister, so, not only did I go through college, but I went through high school twice!

Yes. "Patience" will be a good word. It doesn't take long for a literalist to get spread out rather thin here at EvC (especially when he must go about learning so much). Well, thank you. I didn't even know about this thread till early this morning as I needed to try to find a thread in which to answer holmes's concerns about Flood geology.This is a subject which I find very interesting, and some things I might have some valuable input on, but I'm afraid that it is also an area I have been challenged to learn more about due comments made in the Silt and Dating thread. (In other words, I didn't know as much as I thought I did...I really hate that as it is really hard on my delusion of knowing it all )In the end, I find that it is good to be challenged to learn one's own position better.

but remember, there really are amazing resources here in the form of knowledge and input from both theologically based and atheistic based members.Feel free to ask any questions that come up but remember, the tighter, more limited you can word the question the more likely you'll get answers that stick on target.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

These were posted by Edge in another thread in the Dates and Dating forum. I don't feel qualified to tackle all of them, but maybe I can take a crack at some of them. But later, as already I've been on here for hours and I need to get some sleep.We'll see edge if I can find any answers at all to any of these questions.

Not sure how much I want to get dragged into this, but your comments in the other thread make me curious for an answer.You found freezing hurricanes (posited in a movie) a ridiculous concept, yet a worldwide flood (posited in book and movie) something real. I am wondering how you maintain these two positions consistently?Indeed, without the Bible as a source that must be proven correct, there is really no obvious evidence that would have suggested there was a worldwide flood at all, that goes double for the idea that the earth is young and so all life was destroyed then and there creating all the fossils we see today.What data convinced you of a flood before and outside of the Bible?

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

In the silt thread you spoke a little about sorting. I am going to dig into my scant Geo 101 and 102 knowledge to see if I can deliver an accurate representation of geologic column and how it cannot have been hydraulically sorted. Resident real geologists please feel free to correct me where I may be wrong.Classical geology tells us that different depositional environments will deposit a different type of sediment. For example, very close to the shore of a coast is mostly sand which is composed of medium to fine grained particles while off in deep water it is mostly silt and mud composed of fine to very fine particles. So in a given location in the geologic column we might see something like this.mudstone - very fine grained
siltstone - fine grained
sandstone - medium grained
conglomerate - large grained
sandstone
siltstone
mudstone
siltstone
sandstone
...
...Here we have a situation where through the geologic column we have places with fine grained sediment both above and below more coarse sediment. In class we learned that this is diagnostic of a location where the depositional environment changed from deep ocean to land back to deep ocean as ocean levels went up and down over long periods of geologic time.The problem with this for some kind of hydraullic sorting standpoint is that the rocks are NOT sorted from largest to smallest bottom to top like what happens in your jar of sediment and water. For the flood to be true there must have been some mechanism that we cannot identify today that sorted the sediment in some places contrary to what you would expect to get hydraulically.I would feel more comfortable if someone else could verify that this is a correct assessment. After all, I only did get a B+ in Geo 102.Moreover, does anyone know of any good examples where we see this kind of this in the column?

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I would feel more comfortable if someone else could verify that this is a correct assessment. After all, I only did get a B+ in Geo 102.

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Actually, quite good for a layperson. What you are describing is a regressive-transgressive sequence.

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Moreover, does anyone know of any good examples where we see this kind of this in the column?

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There were several of these sequences in the late Cretaceous of the western US. The Mancos Shale is overlain by the Mesa Verde Group, overlain, in turn by the Lewis Shale in Colorado. THen more sand and more shale, etc., representing continuing regression and transgression. There are probably hundreds of such examples across the world of many different ages; which, of course, makes it even harder for YECs to explain.The Mesa Verde Group is quite complex but extends eastward across the Rocky Mtn. area as a large toungue of fluvial sandstones, beach and swamp deposits into the Cretaceous epieric sea, which we can characterize as a shale basin. It is really quite instructive to study a stratigraphic reconstruction of this geological setting.

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I don't feel qualified to tackle all of them, ...

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This has stopped very few YECs from trying...

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... but maybe I can take a crack at some of them.

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Fire at will. We shall see if you have anything that we have not heard at least fifty times before.

Hi edge,Are you a geologist are something? Just curious.

Hey Edge, I was thinking of the same area though a little lower in the section. Coincidence??? lolThis message has been edited by roxrkool, 12-16-2004 01:41 AM

I recently read a new paper by Karl Kellogg on the geology of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison (*.PDF document).Although it's a professional paper from the USGS, it is a very easy, non-technical read and perfect for the interested layperson. It reads more like an in-depth park brochure.What it does nicely, I think, is go through the geologic history of an area, starting at the bottom of the strat column with the oldest rocks, and moving up through time to the youngest rocks at the top. It paints a nice picture of the processes that formed each group of rocks and the canyon itself. Looking at the strat column and reading the descriptions of the rocks shows the complexity of the rock pattern. It's not simply a straight forward depostion of generic sediment from a column of water.One thing you never see in YEC literature is what exactly the rocks mean. To YECs, a shale is a shale, limestone is a limestone, and sandstone is sandstone. But to the rest of the geologic world, these rocks represent dynamic and ever-changing environments, and the relationship between the rocks is just as important as the rocks themselves.A rock is a single frame in time - geologic columns are movies!This message has been edited by roxrkool, 12-16-2004 01:41 AM

Yes, I remember calling it that now. Thanks for the good examples. I actually thought there was a good example of one here where I live in New Mexico but I wasn't sure enough to say so. Geologists that I spoke to when I was in the program said that they are stoked to live out here because this region has such an interesting geologic history.Overall I think that it is this issue with regressive-transgressive sequences that I think really puts the nail in the coffin of the hydraulic sorting argument. Creationists just dont often understand that yes the geologic column is sorted but not by anything that any way resembles the consistency we would see from a single sorting process. Among other things it is sorted by changes in local depositional environment and by change in fossil morphology (NOT size or density) with depth.I just wish that they would be okay with believing that God was the sorting mechanism and stop trying to make a science out of it. I have many friends who take this position and we get along fine. I would not get along fine with them though if they were out picketting in front of a school board meeting demanding eviloution warning stickers on books.