Off Topic Posts aka Rabbit Trail Thread - Mostly YEC Geology

What is your point? What is the picture supposed to demonstrate? You don't seem to be grasping anything I've said. Your answers are all off in some other galaxy. To see WHAT now? Look, you know I'm talking about the shots of the Grand Canyon where you can see them lying there flat and horizontal for huge distances. I know there are places where they don't, so what? The point is that in NO place could they have lain there so flat and horizontal for billions of years, only THEN to have been cut through by a canyon. WHY SUDDENLY ALL AT ONCE A CANYON AFTER NO DISTURBANCES OF ANY MAGNITUDE FOR ALL THOSE BILLIONS OF YEARS?Your picture shows a part of the canyon where the tectonic forces shifted it from its original horizontality. What again is it that you want me to notice there? That is correct. The fact that any of them could lie there that long undisturbed is what I'm talking about. And where they ARE disturbed it occurred AFTER they were all there in place supposedly for those billions of years. Good grief, I KNOW that is the standard geological idea of the timing of the formations, I'm giving a DIFFERENT explanation. There was no canyon when the uplift occcurred, caused by the tectonic/volcanic force from beneath. There was just the huge expanse (thousands of square miles) of sedimentary strata a couple of miles deep. The force from beneath lifted the entire stack at once, at the same time tilting the lowest layers which became the platform as it were for the stack above.The tilting would have been accompanied by horizontal sliding as well, with great abrasion between the tilted strata and the upper remaining horizontal strata, causing the wide area of erosion in which rocks are embedded in the sandstone of the Tapeats formation.The upper layers remained in place more or less horizontal although distended by the upward pressure. (I say "distended" because they did not break, they stretched to conform to the uplift, and this can be seen on the slopes of the uplift where the strata are all following the contour of the uplift) The force that caused all this also caused the very uppermost layers to crack which allowed the remaining flood waters to rush in carrying chunks of the broken strata with it, which is what carved out the canyon.The strata on both sides remained where they were. They were just sculpted out by the water which left the two sides standing facing each other. There is no mystery why the layers you mention remain on the same level on both sides of the canyon. That's where they were when the water cut through them and that's where they stayed. If you were making any kind of effort to understand what I'm saying you could have figured this out for yourself. Not getting your question. "Ends" of the strata? If you mean the Great Unconformity at the bottom I've explained that almost more than I've explained anything else. The tectonic and volcanic activity that occurred after all the strata were in place tilted the lower layers while the stack above remained in place and exerted a resistance by its great weight, against the force from beneath. That is what caused the layers to tilt and slide beneath the upper layers that remained more or less horizontal although now also being lifted by the force. You got the tilting or unconformity, you got the schist from the pressure and the heat, you got the granite from the magma and so on. I've explained it so if that doesn't do it you are going to have to be more specific about exactly WHICH erosional surfaces you have in mind. Well, it ought to so if it ddoesn't you aren't picturing what I'm picturing (and not trying very hard either I must add) or you have some other erosion in mind.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I believe I said I've been unable to be certain about how much this belief counts in defining salvation, there hasn't been a sudden shift just that I'm not sure. When people outright contradict the Bible as in turning its world wide flood into a local flood that seems to be seomthing that would compromise their salvation just because it involves tampering with the scripture, but on the other hand I don't want to make these scientific questions that throw so many people definitive of salvation IF THEY OTHERWISE ADHERE TO THE DOCTRINES OF SALVATION AS SPELLED OUT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, and I end up just not knowing. The point was that it is not my own personal private idea, as so many keep trying to make it out to be, it has a large weight of consensus and history behind it, and in fact is consdiered by this tradition to be THE Church that goes back to the beginning. Nothing is going to persuade someone who doesn't want to be persuaded, I'm simply arguing that this is no minor trend or private interpretation. Huh? This is quite strange. I could say that your consensus is equally selected, since many of us don't agree with it.

You cannot see the AGE of the fossil by looking at it, you all determine its AGE by your THEORY. The AGE of the fossil, its AGE. You can't see an age difference among fossils by just looking at them. They all LOOK the same age to me. Yes, you can tell from the photographs that the strata are just lying there undisturbed and you know that geologists say they are all millions of years different in age going down a few billion years, and you have to wonder, if you are not blinded by the establishment bias, how they just stayed there like that for those billions of years without encountering the sort of disturbance that finally did occur on the scale of a canyon's being cut through them. Why did it take so long and then why suddenly did such a huge disturbance occur? I don't think you guys can even grasp the question for some reason you're so busy looking at your theoretical trees and missing the visible forest. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Apparently, then, you can see an age similarity among fossils just by looking at them. How is that? Do you have special magic eyes that see time as well as color? No.

Look this started out as mostly a joke because of something Coragyps said which i've now forgotten (and yes it's USUALLY not worth interrupting a post to track down that sort of information). You CANNOT tell age by the appearance of a fossil, that is, by its CONDITION. They all look the same as as general condition goes. It doesn't take magic eyes. It's obvious. Yes you can, yes you can, yes you can, yes you can, yes you can.Can.Yes.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

That the disconformity is visible to the naked eye without being close up, contrary to what you said. The disconformity. Apart from the ones that don't, but you're not talking about those, right? They didn't. That is not what real geologists "suppose", it's something you've made up. Yeah, my point was that what real geologists say make sense whereas your crap doesn't. Sure. But how could they stay on the same level when the G.C.S. tilted? What happened to the north end of the G.C.S? So how did it tilt the lower layers without tilting the upper layers?Get a stack of books. Try to tilt the ones at the bottom while leaving the ones on top horizontal. See if you can do that. Also, see if the upper ends of the tilted books magically disappear in the process. Yes, but how did they manage to stay on the same level when the tilting occurred? Yeah. The north ends of the strata in the G.C.S. aren't there, they are truncated by a horizontal erosional surface. In the real world, this is because they were eroded after the uplift and before the deposition of the overlying strata. What's the explanation of this from whatever planet you're orbiting? The ones in the Grand Canyon will do for starters. I am not at all persuaded that you have a picture in your mind so much as a jumble of words.

Which? You cannot tell from the photograph that the strata were undisturbed because, here's the thing, the strata were not undisturbed.

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I believe I said I've been unable to be certain about how much this belief counts in defining salvation, there hasn't been a sudden shift just that I'm not sure

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Of course there's been a sudden shift. And I have to say that insisting that any church that accepts non-YECs as members isn't Christian doesn't sound like someone who's unsure of the importance of the issue.

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When people outright contradict the Bible as in turning its world wide flood into a local flood that seems to be seomthing that would compromise their salvation just because it involves tampering with the scripture, but on the other hand I don't want to make these scientific questions that throw so many people definitive of salvation IF THEY OTHERWISE ADHERE TO THE DOCTRINES OF SALVATION AS SPELLED OUT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, and I end up just not knowing

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"Not knowing" would mean not taking a firm position. Not changing position all the time.

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The point was that it is not my own personal private idea, as so many keep trying to make it out to be, it has a large weight of consensus and history behind it, and in fact is consdiered by this tradition to be THE Church that goes back to the beginning. Nothing is going to persuade someone who doesn't want to be persuaded, I'm simply arguing that this is no minor trend or private interpretation.

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On the other hand it's quite clear that your main reason for arguing for it is that YOU believe it, and that's the point that you are trying to argue against.

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Huh? This is quite strange. I could say that your consensus is equally selected, since many of us don't agree with it.

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You'd be very dishonest if you did. It's a fact that the vast majority of scientists who work in relevant fields accept evolution. That's a real consensus of the relevant experts. There's no selection for anything other than expertise (a VALID criterion). Your "consensus" is based on selecting people who agree with the view in question (an INVALID criterion that begs the question).

No there hasn't. The TRUE CHURCH is YEC. If nonYEC views aren't enough to keep one from salvation, and I hope they aren't, they are still a deviation from the true BIBLICAL doctrine that the TRUE Church has embraced through history. Occasional exceptions don't alter the rule. The true Church still has to allow for weak members who stumble over secondary issues, as long as they don't violate the basic doctrines of salvation. In my case that's the form it's been taking, sorry. And Paul you are SO gracious to your opponents, I just want to take this opportunity to thank you for always giving the benefit of the doubt and graciously assuming I know what I mean. [qs] Just as the fact that you argue for evolution because you believe it is the point you are now trying to argue against. Yes, my believing it is NOT the criterion, my claim that it has historical consensus is the criterion. Again, if my belief were the point so would your belief in evolution be the point of what you are arguing against me, which you are denying. Likewise I deny that my belief is the standard I'm referring to. Well, the vast majority of Christians from the Reformation on taught all the doctrines I adhere to, AND STILL DO, and the Reformers pointed back to believers all through the centuries to the apostles as well, and that's the consensus I'm referring to. The fact that apostasies and corruptions have always existed and been growing for a century or so doesn't alter the nature of the true Bible-believing Church which is still THE Church.The difference is that the vast majority who believe in evolution are wrong.Also all those experts who believe in evolution don't necessarily think it through and many couldn't even defend it effectively. They take it for granted as the accepted wisdom of the field and go on and do their work taking it for granted. That is not true and if it were it would describe belief in evolution as well, as I keep saying. I trace the true Church through thousands of "experts," men trained in seminaries and so on, as well as recognized famous evangelists and others down through history. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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No there hasn't

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Then I guess you must be engaging in doublethink, because there's no other explanation.

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The TRUE CHURCH is YEC. If nonYEC views aren't enough to keep one from salvation, and I hope they aren't, they are still a deviation from the true BIBLICAL doctrine that the TRUE Church has embraced through history. Occasional exceptions don't alter the rule. The true Church still has to allow for weak members who stumble over secondary issues, as long as they don't violate the basic doctrines of salvation.

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So there could be people on your "TRUE CHURCH" who do accept that the evidence disproves YEC belief ?

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Just as the fact that you argue for evolution because you believe it is the point you are now trying to argue against. Yes, my believing it is NOT the criterion, my claim that it has historical consensus is the criterion. Again, if my belief were the point so would your belief in evolution be the point of what you are arguing against me, which you are denying. Likewise I deny that my belief is the standard I'm referring to.

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In other words the basis of your argument is tradition. Except we know very well that you can heartily condemn tradition whenever you disagree with it.

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Well, the vast majority of Christians from the Reformation on taught all the doctrines I adhere to, AND STILL DO, and the Reformers pointed back to believers all through the centuries to the apostles as well, and that's the consensus I'm referring to. The fact that apostasies and corruptions have always existed and been growing for a century or so doesn't alter the nature of the true Bible-believing Church which is still THE Church.

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I very much doubt that you can support that without begging the question, as you have been doing.

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The difference is that the vast majority who believe in evolution are wrong

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Of course that is just another piece of question-begging on your part.

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That is not true and if it were it would describe belief in evolution as well, as I keep saying. I trace the true Church through thousands of "experts," men trained in seminaries and so on, as well as recognized famous evangelists and others down through history

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Of course it IS true. And you are right to put scare-quotes about "experts" since you reject the views of most of the relevant experts. Being a "famous evangelist" does not in itself grant any special knowledge, and even seminaries are devoted more to teaching doctrine than facts (although many do teach some real Bible scholarship).

Quite often the same theories have practical technologies as an outcome and lead to predictions that the world is billions of years old.For instance an MRI machine uses quantum field theory. Since you would count an MRI machine, I hope, as a practical technological result, that means quantum field theory is "REAL" science.However quantum field theory also says the world is 13.7 billion years old, at least.Your distinctions have no merit.

Why do you want me to see this disconformity? What does that have to do with anything I've been saying? For some reason you are insisting on some kind of semantic point and refusing to get what I'm saying; either that or you need me to be clearer and I don't know which it is and can't know until you stop your stubborn cryptic way of talking and genuinely try to communicate. All you are doing here is repeating the party line, pulling rank and refusing to deal with what I'm trying to say. I know what I'm saying contradicts establishment geology, so I expect it to be offensive, and a strong commitment to your point of view with all its weight of establishment authority and so on is going to make you impatient with any attempt to challenge it, so that it would be hard for you to take it seriously at all. I understand all that, but some effort to grasp the opposing point of view seems called for nevertheless. Yet all you've done is make up a straw man misrepresentation -- OR you sincerely aren't getting what I'm saying (although again I know you don't want to so aren't really trying) -- and generally throw up obstacles to communication. I still don't know what you are talking about. You mean the north SIDE perhaps, you mean the fact that the rim of the north side is at the "Pennsylvanian" limestone which is quite a bit lower than the rim on the South side which is at the Kaibab, or "Permian" level? Is that what you mean by "tilting?"But they aren't tilted, they're just at different levels. That's easily enough explained as the washing away of those strata along with all the rest of the uppermost strata when the flood water drained and cut the canyon. Why it took away more strata on the north than on the south I don't know but I would guess it had to do with things like direction of water flow and differences in tectonic effect and that sort of thing. If there is some tilting from south to north that would also make a difference in those factors but that tilting must be very slight. I went into this at some length with PaulK, I don't know if it was on this thread or the previous thread. I referred him to my blog where I discuss it in some detail using illustrations from Lyell -- which he insisted on taking too literally, but anyway he got the basic principle at least that it's possible for lower layers to buckle while leaving upper layers intact.I just lost this whole post by hitting something by mistake after trying to explain this whole thing again to you and now I'm not up to another effort, but maybe I can find the older posts at least. Books aren't a suitable model for such an experiment. The strata were still damp in my model and capable of stretching and buckling without breaking, which books aren't. Lyell's model used folded cloth between books showing how the cloth buckles from lateral pressure from the books to the side with a book overhead as resistance. That's what PaulK took too literally, as if the lower strata had to be malleable but the upper rigid, and that's not at all what I had in mind. That model was simply to demonstrate the basic principle that lower can be affected without affecting the upper.The same effect can be had if the force from beneath is met by an equal force from above in the weight of the strata, also facilitated by the difference in texture between the different kinds of rock at the point between the buckled lower strata and the remaining horizontal upper strata, which allows slippage between the two. Of course there would be severe abrasion of the buckled strata, which accounts for the breaking off of chunks that got embedded in the sandstone from the higher layer which was abraded horizontally. This is the case both at Siccar Point and the eroded area between the Great Unconformity and the Tapeats Sandstone in the Grand Canyon. What tilting? You are being stubbornly cryptic here as usual. Just say what you mean please. The two sides look to be on the same level, WHAT tilting are you talking about? Still no idea what you mean by "ends" unless I did get it and answered it above. I'd be happy to try to give you an explanation if you would try translating your message into simple English from whatever distant galaxy you are broadcasting from. Uh huh, and WHICH ones in the GC may I ask? If you would be so kind as to give up your stonewalling and give me an answer in nice clear English. Yes, well that IS the problem here that you won't even TRY to get what I'm saying, even TRY to see what I'm explaining to you. When you finally get over your stubborn refusal to make an effort maybe you could at least finally get that I do have a coherent model here. Most of it accords with other creationist studies of the GC that I'm aware of, though I do have some thoughts of my own as well. And if you can overcome your resistance to that extent, maybe you can try to answer the REAL model I'm actually presenting instead of leading me in a romp around the mulberry bush over and over and over again, hoping to do me in eventually by sheer attrition. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Probably, but it is better for any attempt to discuss things with me to stick with the sciences I have some familiarity with. Yes, and so does geology, but despite claims that the old earth timing affects practical results I doubt that its practical uses in any way hinge on that part of its calculations. I think they're a sort of window dressing that is assumed to have a practical effect but really doesn't.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

They have no canyons cut into them until the "Permian" layer, and in the Grand Staircase above that.They have no rivers running through them, you know, not even a creek, which you'd think could cut through at the "Cambrian" or "Mississippian" level as well as the "Permian" level millions of years later, but oddly enough it didn't happen according to your theory. Yet the Colorado River happened millions of years later and cut through from the "Permian" level, just one errant river out of nowhere after billions of years of quiet accumulation of layers. Not to mention that establishment geology thinks a little river could have cut that monster canyon at all.Some of the layers have a knife-edge sharp interface with another layer above or below, and others have some degree of erosion between the layers, THAT erosion being of a degree that can be explained as flood water runoff between the layers.They have remarkably flat upper surfaces and flat lower surfaces. RELATIVELY flat at least, to the naked eye, which is not how normal "disturbed" earth surfaces look, and certainly not over thousands of square miles of such flatness, which is the extent of some of these layers. Where are you going to find such extensive flatness either on the surface or on the ocean floors?Or if they were all under water for all that time to account for their relatively undisturbed appearance, how then explain the sudden disturbance of the canyon?And really, what I've been trying to argue here is that ALL the disturbance occurred after all the strata were in place, caused by tectonic/volcanic force from beneath that caused the uplift, the tilting of the lowest "Pre-cambrian" strata, the Great Unconformity, the schist, the granite and the cutting of the canyon as well as all the stairs of the Grand Staircase and the canyons up in that area -- all as one package brought about by tectonic movement AFTER all the strata were in place.But that's MY model. YOU still have to account for how there could be a mile-deep stack of *relatively* flat strata that lasted a couple billion years before the disturbance of a great canyon happened to the whole stack at once.They are in that undisturbed condition from the "Pre-Cambrian" to the "Permian."Whatever "disturbances" you are blathering about are NOT disturbances of the sort that should have occurred in whatever billions of years you assign to them. And the fact that HUGE disturbances occurred only at the "Permian" level suggests that the planet was crazily tranquil for all that time before all of a sudden breaking out in canyons and twisted strata and the like, which cannot possibly have been the case.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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I went into this at some length with PaulK, I don't know if it was on this thread or the previous thread. I referred him to my blog where I discuss it in some detail using illustrations from Lyell -- which he insisted on taking too literally, but anyway he got the basic principle at least that it's possible for lower layers to buckle while leaving upper layers intact.

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Not "taking literally" UNDERSTANDING. The reason why the book does not buckle. Is because it is rigid. That rigidity is essential to the illustration working as it does.

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Books aren't a suitable model for such an experiment. The strata were still damp in my model and capable of stretching and buckling without breaking, which books aren't. Lyell's model used folded cloth between books showing how the cloth buckles from lateral pressure from the books to the side with a book overhead as resistance. That's what PaulK took too literally, as if the lower strata had to be malleable but the upper rigid, and that's not at all what I had in mind. That model was simply to demonstrate the basic principle that lower can be affected without affecting the upper.

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i.e. we weren't meant to understand HOW it happens. If you cared about the truth the you would already have thought about that...

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The same effect can be had if the force from beneath is met by an equal force from above in the weight of the strata, also facilitated by the difference in texture between the different kinds of rock at the point between the buckled lower strata and the remaining horizontal upper strata, which allows slippage between the two. Of course there would be severe abrasion of the buckled strata, which accounts for the breaking off of chunks that got embedded in the sandstone from the higher layer which was abraded horizontally. This is the case both at Siccar Point and the eroded area between the Great Unconformity and the Tapeats Sandstone in the Grand Canyon.

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Of course, that isn't true. Pressure from above will not stop the the "upper" layer from being deformed by the pressures from beneath. The "upper" layer must be rigid enough to prevent that happening. And "breaking off chunks" or even abrasion would require both strength and rigidity. Not to mention that the lower layer must be pretty solid for it to remain in chunks... And then there's the question of the lateral forces causing the deformation, and why they aren't affecting the "upper" layer...So no, you don't have a working model.