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Not in THIS kind of Flood which was an expansion of the oceans to cover every bit of land. The oceans are crisscrossed with currents at different depths, and different temperatures, that do carry things along within them. Such a flood would have dissolved everything dissolvable and apparently sorted it somehow. Of course we don't kow how for sure, it's all speculation, just as your stuff is speculation. Wave action also could have deposited layers over a huge breadth of land.
Actually it looks like a desperate attempt to dismiss the evidence without thinking. THere's no real explanation or even consideration of the problems here.
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But the layering makes far LESS sense on the evolutionist interpretation.
By which you mean that the science of geology is complete nonsense. Evolution has VERY little input to geology. If geologists had found your ideas viable evolution would have failed. BUt they didn't and don't.
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Why should eras of time be demarcated by any such geological phenomena?
For a start, the eras were determined by geology - or rather the geology that the scientists of the time knew. So the whole question is the wrong way around. Not that there are precise worldwide markers by any means.
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Why shouldn't there be a continuous piling up of mixed sediments over those supposed billions of years?
Because conditions change over time. There is uplift and subsidence. Basins fill. Volcanic eruptions occur.
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Such phenomena occur in the present for particular reasons in limited locations. The idea that the entire earth would be layered makes NO sense except on the basis of the Flood catastrophe which stirred up everything, dissolved everything and redeposited it in layers.
I guess you haven't been following the creationist claim that the geological column isn't real. There are a few areas on Earth that have seen deposition in every geological era, but they are unusual. THere are widespread layers, but none worldwide.
Even your solution claim is silly, because most rocks aren't that soluble - are you seriously suggesting that the Flood dissolved large quantities of silica? (glass is a form of silica, how soluble is that ?) Calcium carbonate is only weakly soluble (sea shells are made of calcium carbonate which would be pretty silly if it was liable to dissolve easily - and of course fossil shells are very common - how could that be if the Flood dissolved them ?) and of course we ought to see a layering based on solubility, with the less common deposits of highly soluble materials like salt at the very end. And then of course we can find solidified lava that erupted and cooled on the surface, and not underwater. How can the Flood account for that ?
So no, conventional geology makes a lot more sense than your ideas which can't cope with something as simple as a fossil shell.
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Well, rivers sort and deposite sediments in layers too. This is the sort of thing that water does. The scale of the Flood was beyond anything we can imagine but we CAN say that WATER ACTS THAT WAY.
Which is why a lot of deposits are attributed to water action of various sorts. But obviously, even if water did dissolve a sea shell precipitating the calcium carbonate out of water would never reform the shell, water DOESN'T behave in THAT way. But there are also deposits which are not attributed to water action and you need to explain those, too.
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There is no reason to think that the mere passage of time should create layers on the earth but the earth is covered with such layers.
Nobody claims that the mere passage of time created the layers - it is the events which happened during that passage of time. In fact the same events as you appealed to as showing what water does, and admitted to happening in the present time are among those causes. And it would be absurd of you to deny that such things could happen in the distant past.
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And again, when you LOOK at the layers in their most undisturbed condition in the Grand Canyon, SO undisturbed for billions of years according to old earth/evolution theory, and THEN subjected to some pretty violent disturbances such as tectonic lifting and twistings (elsewhere, not in the GC) and the cutting of the canyon, how can you even THINK long ages?
This simply seems bizarre to me. How can you look at proof of long ages and reject it with such certainty ?
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No, they are merely in thrall to the accumulated "knowledge" of their discipline. The work they do is done under that umbrella. They take it for granted, they have no reason to question it as far as they know. That's normal science. It doesn't make anyone stupid, but it would be nice if creationists could get our act together well enough to make some of you have to rethink the foundations you are taking for granted.
Of course, if the discipline were as absurd as you say then this situation would be impossible. The fact is that geologists know a whole lot more than you - you don't even understand basic facts like the solubility of the rocks or the extent of geological layering. And that I think is the problem - the geologists know what they are talking about, while you insist that knowledge is irrelevant - everyone should just jump to the conclusions you like. And you have no compunction in attacking anyone who dares to disagree with you, without caring if your attacks are really true enough (sufficient in court for a finding of malice).
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I'm not asking for "trust," just a consideration of the evidence as I see it which I hope I argue with some intelligence.
Seems to me that you're demanding a whole lot more than trust. And considering the evidence as you see it, doesn't preclude a consideration of the evidence as it actually is - even evidence that you would rather we ignored.
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Well, presumably AFTER they've been formed they could be MOVED and stacked in a layer, couldn't they? All in the form of loose sediments perhaps broken up by the Flood waters before being moved.
I suppose that you could claim that your dissolution and precipitation left no actual evidence at all, but what would the point of that be ?
How would you distinguish that from the original material being eroded and moved around ?
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The lithification would have occurred over a much longer period than the period of the Flood itself, which merely did the work of deposition into layers. The weight of the stack must have done quite a bit of the hardening, at least of the lower layers, and then after the Flood receded it must have taken a fair amount of time for it to dry out and harden. Years? A century?
According to what I've read, much longer than that. Too long for you.
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Sorry, I just figured the other creatures were sparsely represented and don't occur in the numbers needed to be evidence for the volutionist scenario, which I believe is borne out by the evidence, and I absolutized it, which I shouldn't have. But I did look up evidence and apparently I was writing my edit to that post while you were answering the earlier version.
I do hope that you realise that your beliefs about the evidence are not evidence in themselves. I can say from personal experience that while ammonites and belemnites are very common in some locales other fossils are also found there in some numbers (e.g.
gryphaea) - and other areas nearby, from the same era can produce quite different fossils (crinoids, oyster beds, sea urchins and numerous small shells, for instance) in large quantities. And that is just my personal experience from amateur fossil collecting near my childhood home. Don't forget that different creatures live in different habitats, and that vertebrate fossils are only very rarely found by casual collectors (although certainly they are found in areas where ammonites are common).
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What I added was links to Steve Austin's work on the nautiloid layer in the GC and the correction that there ARE other creatures in the layer with the nautiloids, but that nevertheless the nautiloids are found there in prodigious numbers, one to a square meter, or he estimates something like 10 billion over the hundreds of square miles he sampled. Such a dense preponderance of one creature in one layer is good evidence for rapid catastrophic deposition and killing, and not good evidence for the long-ages evolutionist interpretation.
I would disagree, in fact your argument makes no sense to me. Surely the numbers are BETTER explained by a long period of time - a catastrophic death can only catch a single generation, while over time many generations can live and die. Surely a catastrophic deposition would catch pretty much everything that lived there. So really I can't see how your evidence comes close to supporting your claim.
Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.
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