So let me interpret this as you setting aside the possibility that a volcano caused the Great Unconformity to instead consider the How is it that you imagine uplift tilting the deeply buried layers of the Grand Canyon supergroup, and then creating an erosion layer on top of them just below the Tapeats Sandstone. Here's a diagram again to help you visually: possibility that it was caused by uplift.
Whatever FORCE created the uplift tilted the layers. Tectonic action had to have been involved so perhaps all of it was the result of that, but some force occurred beneath the canyon that uplifted the whole thing.
I'll get to your question in a minute but I woke up this morning realizing I hadn't explained why the malleability of the strata is important, too much on my mind, tired of getting nowhere with this argument, feeling rushed.
STRATA IN PLACE BEFORE UPLIFT:
Anyway, the fact that the strata conform to the mounded shape of the uplift shows that the strata were already there when the uplift occurred, because they would have been deposited as the usual horizontal layers and wouldn't follow the slope of the land, they'd butt up against the slope. This may also demonstrate that they were malleable because still wet, which many I've read affirm, but you insist they don't have to be wet to follow the contour of the land and that's not the important thing. The important thing is that they DO follow the contour of the mounded area into which the GC is cut, and that proves that the upheaval that caused the contour occurred after all the strata were already laid down. That's my theme song you know: strata all in place THEN come the disturbances, tectonic, volcanic, earthquakes, faulting, broken up higher strata, canyons cut, stairs sculpted, name it, etc etc. After all the strata were in place THEN all this occurs and not before. Again, proved by strata following contour of uplift.
MEANWHILE, WHAT HAPPENED IN THE BASEMENT:
SO, now look at the bottom of the canyon where we see the Great Unconformity, that huge block of tilted layers. It looks on the diagram like the uplift more or less follows the uptilting of that formation. Then there is the illustration of magma intrusion and the igneous rocks, implying the volcano beneath, the granite which takes heat and pressure to form and the schist. And it makes sense to add the formation of the Shinumo quartzite as a result of that same event as well. So these rocks all apparently formed by the heat of the volcano below, and, as I've been putting it together, also in conjunction with the pressure of the weight of the stack above, which has been laid down by that point to a couple miles in depth, evidenced by the fact that the uplift occurred AFTER the whole stack was in place.
That's how I arrived at the idea that it was the upheaval beneath the canyon that made the unconformity and lifted the whole stack all in the same event after the stack was in place to a depth of at least two miles. The roundedness or mounding of the uplifted area didn't suggest a tectonic cause, that's why I got the volcanic magma bubble in the picture, but as you have made me aware I can see that that wouldn't exert the force needed to lift the stack, so it had to be tectonic force and the tilting of the strata into the unconformity now seems to be the rock platform over which the mounding occurred. In any case it's clear to my mind that the uplift occurred after the stack was all in place so its shaping into the mound was part of that event.
So back to your question which I've already partially answered:
How is it that you imagine uplift tilting the deeply buried layers of the Grand Canyon supergroup, and then creating an erosion layer on top of them just below the Tapeats Sandstone. Here's a diagram again to help you visually:
OK, I've already shown that the uplift occurred after the stack was in place, shown by the strata following the contour of the uplift above. It had to have been caused by a tremendous force and you can see the effects of that force in what you just described. The tilting of the supergroup was caused by that force, and as it was tilted it met the resistance of the weight of the strata above, to more than two miles deep at that point, and the point of resistance was between the tilting layers and the Tapeats Sandstone (I kept forgetting the name of it and misnamed it earlier). At that level where the resistance meets the force the tilting layers slid under the Tapeats sandstone layer and the abrasion caused the erosion that is pretty visible in that area.
As I recall both the sandstone from the Tapeats and the various rocks in the tilting supergroup are mixed together in that band of erosion, which is evidence of the scenario I'm describing and shows that the erosion was NOT created on the Old Earth scenario of: 1) tilting rock (no stack above), 2) erosion developing over a very long time of exposure until the tilted ends of the supergroup were eroded flat, 3) and then the other layers laid down over great aeons of time. Didn't happen that way.
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And now you raise another question, regarding what I think happened to the highest strata as a result of all this.
The point is that the UPLIFT caused the breaking of the strata and this happened at both the GC and the GS, and this uplift is what distorted the lay of th4e whole land, ALONG WITH the shaking caused by the tectonic movement AND the volcanoes, all together breaking up the higher strata.
Why do you require the strata to be broken up?
You go on to raise an objection that I need to answer separately so I'll start with this: It's not that I REQUIRE that the strata be broken up, it's that as I contemplate the facts that the strata were already in place to an enormous depth -- could have been closer to three miles though two miles is a certainty, which I can explain later -- and that the uplift contoured the land over the canyon into a rounded mound, and that you can see that the canyon cuts into that mound, on one side of it, I pictured strain being caused to the upper part of the stack of layers that stretched them over that mounding, and of course there would be more strain in the higher parts of it. This may be obvious but I may need an illustration and one isn't coming to mind. Oh one just did: Create a stack of flat layers of malleable clay, build them over a flat balloon which you then blow up after they are all in place. The clay layers would stretch to follow the contour of the expanding balloon but at some point they would start to break apart, and the highest ones would be stretched the most so would break first, followed by the others.
The current upper rim of the canyon is only about a mile above the base so that was a LOT of layers above it that we can see were eroded away at some point. I just figured the stretching effect of the uplift caused them to crack and eventually break. The layers would still have been damp at least if just laid down in the Flood, which I figured contributed to their ability to stretch at all, but again, if you insist not then it's not crucial to the point. The point still is that they WERE already in place when the uplift occurred.
As I keep telling you, on a scale of miles rock is very pliable. It's going to bend, not break.
OK, but only up to a point, they aren't pliable like Silly Putty or taffy or chewing gum that you can stretch a long way before it breaks; they are going to break at some point well short of that degree of stretch.
Where around the world have you ever heard it reported that volcanoes or earthquakes broke up sedimentary layers into little pieces that then begin eroding away at the enormous rate your scenario requires.
You have to picture the mounding of the uplifted land that put strain on the layers by stretching them over this expanding balloon shape. The force that created the uplift is more or less incidental to this fact. If the volcano beneath the canyon wouldn't have done it then it must have been the tectonic force that caused both the volcano and the tilting of the supergroup which seems to have been the main part of the "balloon" of my illustration, over which the land mounded, to a great depth. All this forcing and tilting and sliding and eroding woujld certainly have been accompanied by earthquakes, and that probably also facilitated the breaking up of the strata being stretched at the higher levels.
As for the eroding away at an enormous rate, that has to do with the supposition that we're at the end of the Flood, which has laid down the layers to their current great depth, so when the upper layers start cracking we've got a huge volume of water ready to rush into the cracks. This could either be from still standing Flood water or from a huge post-Flood standing lake that I've found described to have existed above and to the east of the canyon area. I don't know which but it just figures that it was water that started the process of opening up those cracks and then it would have carried all that material that was breaking up with it and that cataract of chunky sediments would have widened the cracks and sculpted them out until eventually the entire gigantic canyon was scoured out. The chunks probably eventually dissolved back into sediment since they wree still wet but at first they would have been damp chunks and would have had quite a bit of abrasive effect on the sides of the cracks that were opening up. We're talking an enormous volume of water of course and an enormous quantity of broken up sediments. And it IS a good question where they ended up because it doesn't seem they ended up in the canyon itself. I just figure they all washed through over some period of time and ended up as I said in California or the Gulf of California. How long it woujld have taken for all that water to drain through and reduce down to river size I don't know but we're not talking millions of years.
You have the layers at the Grand Canyon being deposited by the flood, then remaining in place long enough to lithify into solid rock,
Haven't meant to say they had already become actual rock, but they would certainly have been much hardened by the weight of the sediments above. Mud with all the water pressed out of it can become hard enough at least to hold its shape. (yes, contrary to Dr. A's suspicions, I did make mudpies as a child) But I figure it WAS still wet, not actual rock, so that a great rush of water could fairly easily have sculpted it out, water carrying the broken up chunks of the higher strata adding more abrasion to the process. That's one HUGE canyon, it took a LOT of water and abrasive material to carve it out.
then the layers being uplifted and broken up, then a mile or so of layers being eroded away to reveal the topography we see today, which is an unheard of rate of erosion in a region that gets little rain.
By normal processes of course it would be, but the various stages of the Flood are something else as I hope I have demonstrated. And the idea that the tiny Colorado River carved all that out is even less likely don't you think?
One point I raised that you haven't addressed yet: most of the layers of the Grand Canyon are marine layers with fine-grained sediment. There are no land lifeforms in these layers, and there are none of the large particle sediment types associated with floods. Many of the layers are limestone, which is particularly finely grained.
Let's say I believed you and wanted to be convinced by you, but I knew that floods don't lay down fine grained sediments, and I couldn't understand how a global flood could create layers containing only marine life. How are you going to help me past these obstacles without insulting my intelligence?
I'm frankly amazed that I understand as much of this as I think I do, I don't expect to be able to answer all the multitudinous challenges people throw at me here. All I can say is that you can't compare the worldwide Flood to just any flood, even a very big flood. This Flood was a planet-covering ocean and the usual idea is that the ocean floor was also affected, stirred up, even that "fountains" opened up at that depth, and much marine life was killed.
The Grand Canyon layers are the lower layers laid down in the Flood, which it makes sense would have contained the marine life killed in the water, while the layers that eroded away above, that are still in evidence in the Grand Staircase, get into the land animals. How that order was developed and maintained is the subject of a lot of guesses, and how particular kinds of sediments make up the layers as well, so my way of approaching this is through the overall structure of the strata, the canyons and so on, because it seems to me this demonstrates, first, that the Old Earth explanation doesn't work, and second, that the Flood is the most likely explanation. But the particulars aren't all that easy to figure out. However, the Old Earth explanations are a lot less elegant, are n fact klutzy, unlikely in the extreme and the Flood explanation really very nice by comparison.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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