Summations Only

I did not dismiss different degrees of erosion as climatic, edge, in fact I merely tacked on the climate point as an afterthought, don't know why you make so much of it. My main point is that the way the mountains formed would explain the different degrees of erosion and I'm answering something somebody said about how it could only be due to time. My guess would be that the difference has to do with the fact that the Alps were pushed up a lot higher than the Appalachians, looks pretty obvious to me. The Appalachians were comparatively gently formed compared to the Alps, may also have been softer than the Alps which were under greater pressure so greater compaction. Something like that.

I didn't. See above. Subduction occurs on the west coast, not the east coast, right? The east coast is moving away from Europe by the separation of the continental plates at the Atlantic ridge, it's a different scenario is it not? Rather less violent than subduction? Enough force to gently buckle the Appalachians but not enough to deform the rocks you are describing or raise the Rockies. Seems to me the evidence ought to be a main part of any discussion, not relegated to the technical literature. And you make it sound easy but the technical language is beyond me, I've tried to read some of the papers online, forget it. I'd have to take a long course in Geology and I'm too old for that and normally too busy with other things too, except lately when my life has been taken over by this forum. And I don't want to take on all the issues involved in the Flood anyway, just a very few. AND, I really don't think it would make a difference to the argument anyway. Well, you all don't believe it's that simple, but I do. My job as a creationist is to see things differently than you do. I don't think having knowledge of the technical language would help with this either since most of it assumes the Old Earth scenario.

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Amount of resistance -- weight, pressure from above -- would apparently have been equal to the force from beneath at that level, so that the effect of the force that created the Great Unconformity and the granite and the schist would not have continued into the strata above.

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But that pressure will be greater on the deeper rocks, so surely it should be the upper strata that are distorted, not the lower ?And obviously it doesn't explain why the transition is so abrupt either. There's no sudden step in the pressure, that gradually reduces as you go up the strata.

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he is demonstrating the buckling or folding of strata by lateral force -- a book on each side-- with a pile of cloths as the strata. Of course he's not trying to prove my scenario but I thought it was a good illustration for that purpose. He has a book on top which keeps the cloth confined to the area between the side books.

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As I pointed out at the time, that relies on the rigidity of the book compared to the cloth. But you don't argue for such a difference in rigidity, and I don't think that there is any reason to think that that is even possibly true.

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So to translate it to my idea: the side books of course represent the tectonic force, and the book above represents the weight of the strata from the Tapeats up through the Claron Formation (the uppermost layer of strata from the Kaibab up, now only to be found in the Grand Staircase but originally above the GC too).

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If that were correct, the book would prevent the upper layers of cloth from distorting. But it doesn't.

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PaulK says I said the upper strata were rigid-but-not-rigid but I'm not sure what he's remembering from me. They would have been pretty rigid it seems to me, with two miles of strata above compressing them all. Rigid enough to make an effective resistance against the forces from beneath anyway.

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This just obviously doesn't work. You need the lower strata to be much less rigid than the higher strata that remain undistorted. But the pressure will be greater, not less.

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I don't make a distinction between the mobility or rigidity of either group of rocks, not sure why you do

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Edge is making that distinction, because it HAS to be there for your model to work !

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It's all about the amount of force versus the amount of resistance. A lot of heat and pressure would have been exerted between the upper and lower rocks; If my scenario is right, then that was the point where the two forces balanced each other out -- does seem to me to be about elementary physics. Uplift was all that happened to the upper strata, then the forces dissipated.

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According to elementary physics the upward force must be greater than the downward pressure for the uplift to occur at all - and the downward pressure will increase with depth. How does this fit with your idea ?

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Well, you guys all love to tell me that this idea or that is impossible but since you're just guessing too, without actual evidence, I'm not convinced. What you are describing certainly doesn't seem impossible to me. Seems to me that the underlying unit in fact WOULD have been heavily abraded since the strata are tilted there so the broken ends of the strata would be easily abraded, and I don't see why there's a problem with their becoming embedded in the upper layer either, or being rounded either for that matter.

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Firstly you ignored half of edge's comment. Why DON'T we see fragments eroded from the upper strata ? And how does the debris from the lower strata become embedded in the upper strata - and how do they become rounded ? Conventional geology explains all these things, easily.

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Well I have to refer you to the cross section where you can see that all the layers tilted on the north are the same layers that have remained flat on the south, only the north block has dropped thousands of feet from the level of the south side. The Claron layer is straight on both sides, apparently resisting the tilting of the others. Do you have a scenario by which the same layer would have deposited both on the lower flat and the upper which is thousands of feet higher?

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You're being asked to explain why the Claron formation can't have been laid after the tilting (and it seems clear to me that it was).

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All the activity, all the disruptions, occurred after all the strata were in place, that's the main observation.

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It's not an observation, it's an interpretation. To my eye the Claron formation was clearly laid after the tilting at Hurricane fault. Nothing else makes sense.Edited by PaulK, : Correct a tag

just a quick note Pressure and weight are both linear functions of the rock density in each layer and the depth of the overall formation (all layers above).Resistance would be a function of friction, which is a function of force normal to the surface being moved, which is a function of pressure and the area of contact.To turn an angular block underground would mean that surfaces of contact would change over the course of the rotation AND you would need voids to make room for the movement.It would be much more practical to argue that there were two periods of tectonic activity - one at the beginning of the flood when the "fountains of the deep" opened, which then turned the supergroup, followed by scouring by the flood and then you laying down of layers, and then finally the tectonic uplift etc etc etc.At least then you don't need to roll over the supergroup underground.It would still be silly putty argument from imagination, just not as silly as before.

No, not enough force for that. The east coast is a passive margin, nothing about the sea-floor spreading at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge could buckle the Appalachians, which is why they are not in fact buckling.

NOW it's a passive margin, but when the separation began at the Atlantic ridge there was most probably some degree of jolting, what with the rising magma and the overcoming of the inertia that got the continents moving. I don't know if that jolting is what buckled the Appalachians or it was caused by the same violent jolting that raised the Rockies, and continued on across the continent in a milder form. I'd guess it was the initial jolt as the continents ripped apart. Since the main action was not a collision but a pulling away I wouldn't expect the same degree of violence as from a collision, but nevertheless some, perhaps an initial rebound effect before the whole shebang got moving along.And of course they would not NOW be continuing to buckle, that was a one-time thing that made the mountains in the first place. It's been quieter since.

So, your only real point is that all mountain ranges are the same age, right? That wasn't the point. The point is that if Cretaceous rocks are deformed in one mountain range, but not in another, it suggests that they are of different ages.But no, you are wrong.Divergent tectonics did not form the Appalachians.And the Appalachians were not just 'gently buckled'. We have pieces of Africa still overthrust onto the North American craton. I am providing you with evidence. The problem is that there is so much that I don't even know where to start, and even more that I have forgotten. It is beyond a lot of people. I have always said that this is more complex than YECs make it out to be.I don't suppose that your inability to understand the technical issues would make you pause at dismissing mainstream science, would it? As I said, this doesn't seem to keep you from insinuating that you know better than people who have studied these things for entire careers. Some would call that 'avoidance'. You can believe whatever you want. Just don't present it as superior to the hard work of many geologists over the last couple of centuries. This presents an air of false arrogance. Your job as a sentient being is to use your mind to analyze data, not just make stuff up because it makes you feel better. Assumes old ages with abundant support.

So you admit that the Appalachians formed at an earlier time.At last, some progress here.In fact, they formed when North Africa collided with North America starting back in Ordovician time. That explains the westward directed thrusting of supracrustal rocks along with pieces of oceanic crust and the edges of the African basement which occur along the east coast. Not a bit.In fact, there is evidence that the west coast was passive margin at the time, possibly with outboard island arcs.Again we see mountain building of different ages. As I said, all evidence says that the Appalachians formed at a continental covergent boundary. The Mid-Ocean Ridge had nothing to do with it.

Okay, then, you abandon that part of your argument? Well, it appears that time is the major factor. For instance, post-orogenic basins formed the Appalachians during the Triassic, whereas they formed in the Rockies in the Pennsylvanian (Carboniferous) and the Tertiary. Please explain. Unfortunately, the metamorphic evidence suggests similar elevations. The rock sequences are of similar age and composition. Possibly the amounts of strain are higher in the Alps, but I wouldn't characterize the Appalachians as having been more 'gentle'. In fact, according to most YECs the Alps would have been 'softer' because of the great recumbent folds present.

If you tear two things apart, they don't buckle up in the middle. Buckling is what happens when you push two things together. And yet some mountains are continuing to rise, namely those associated with subduction. However, the rifting of the Atlantic is still happening, and the passive margins are not turning into mountains.

You refer to a zone of weakness. The problem is that there are lines of evidence that would support this if it happened. For instance, usually such zones show signs of mylonitization, grinding with formation of secondary lamination. There should also be a zone of detachment between the bodies of varying ductility and usually pieces of the more competent rock within the less competent, commonly showing alignment. This is just to name a few features that would be diagnostic.Problem is, they are not present in the GC. The forces are not from beneath. They are lateral, and the strain is concentrated in the weaker zone. You are not interpreting the forces correctly nor do you account for the expected features.You may think of this feature as an overthrust. Which, by the way, most YECs deny.

Too busy until recently. Right now just doing volunteer work. In fact, I was up at Mines today meeting with students. Hope all is well with you. I think Chuck is retired in Reno now. Well, it can't be for long. These things bore me after a while and I stop responding. I detect an underlying intelligence, buried in a flood of pernicious religious dogma and misinformation. But yeah, I guess I'm a sucker for giving people the benefit of the doubt.

I couldn't help myself either while on Christmas vacation, then I had to go back to work. Way too busy these days, too.Even if Faith refuses to acknowledge the obvious, preferring to play ignorant, this thread is fantastic.

We see the early stages if continental rifting in the Afar region of Africa. No mountain-building there, either. Just volcanism, horsts and grabens, and thinning/splitting of the crust.Extension results in normal faults, listric faults, and large-scale relatively gentle deformation. Not the tight, recumbent, or complex fold patterns observed in the Appalachians.

Roughly. Suggests to me merely that there was more deforming force at work in the one than in the other. You're right about that. I don't consider Old Earth science to be reliable testable science, and the technical language only serves to make it inaccessible. The technical language is often Old Earth language anyway. Triassic this and Cretaceous that. Which is merely mystification. Of course not. But I make a distinction between physical knowledge or physical Geology, which I take seriously, and speculative imaginative interpretive historical Geology which is just a lot of hot air and open to my interpretations as well as anybody else's because interpretation is all it is anyway. In this area it's not a matter of greater knowledge, it's just a matter of greater immersion in the Old Earth assumptions or bias.