Summations Only

You're saying that a catastrophic flood runoff the like of which we cannot imagine was really a gently slow-flowing stream?

IOW you want to ignore all the evidence in order to sustain your belief.

Well, what can I say to technical journal stuff? How can I answer those bald assertions of OE interpretive assumptions as if they were known fact? I can give my usual insulting comments but I really don't want to insult you.I guess you are happy with the number of faults you have found in the canyon as sufficient for the 750 million years in question? Also they are labeled with time period names, Pleistocene, and Proterozoic as if they occurred lower in the stack as I've been saying doesn't occur on the cross section. I don't know how they get those names but since they aren't shown on a cross section view I also can't comment on them. A guess would be that the stack is eroded away above that level so that the fault line just happens to end there by default. But there's no way to tell anything about it from the diagram you give.And I guess you are happy with the idea that the conditions for magmatic intrusions of the sort I say should be expected simply haven't been met in 750 million years? But what I was picturing was not intrusions into existing layers, but spilling on top of layers that are now deep in the stack, so that the expected next sedimentary deposit would butt up against it, which would be visible at quite a distance as a blob between layers.I do think that Kaibab Monocline is quite the amazing thing though, those layers simply draped over it quite conformably, layers that supposedly took millions of years to deposit holding their shape while being stretched down that slope. Well, Percy did say lithified rock can stretch a lot. Me I'd have to guess that draping occurred at the same time as the uplift and the other disturbances. This was also discussed in the creationist video I posted here some time ago too.But you win Rox. All this stuff is pure mystification to me, which you know, and I wouldn't want to insult you anyway and that's all I can do with a post like this.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I realized that on that cross section there IS evidence that angular unconformities are formed after all the strata are in place, by the tilting of a lower segment under an upper which remains horizontal. This you can see at the north end of the Grand Staircase where the Hurricane Fault has divided the stack north-south. The tilted part on the north side or left of the fault line includes all the layers seen on the right side of the fault, and on both sides of the fault the Claron layer and the lava field above it lie horizontally above them, which shows that they were already there when the fault divided the stack. They couldn't have been deposited after the stack was laid down on the right and tilted on the left, at the very least because the lava field wouldn't have been deposited on the left of the fault afterward because of the location of the dike. It might have spilled over the edge but apparently that didn't happen. In any case the Claron and the lava field are identical on both sides of the fault line showing that they were already in place when the fault occurred.It was all in place before the fault split it, and this is also evidence in favor of the Great Unconformity's having possibly been formed in the same way, the Supergroup tilting under the stack that was already in place above.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I prefer the facts, Faith. I don't have a horse in this race and I'm prepared to be educated. If I'm wrong, I'm absolutely positive I'll be put right, but it will be done by facts and not supposition.We know that there are areas of the earth that are geologically active and there are areas that aren't, so it should be no surprise when we see that pattern replicated in the earth's sediments. If the sediments were an enormous jumble everywhere you might have a point, otherwise I don't believe you do.

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This is some weird thing I can't even follow, but the layers to the left are the Grand Staircase and I've included them in all my discussions, also my theory about how the whole area got eroded as it is by all those disturbances we're talking about, and your notion that I'm "surprised" by any of it is just off the wall. Probably because you haven't been following the argument until recently. Oh well, what do I expect?

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You've missed my entire point, which was that there are missing layers which, unless you knew that, would suggest to no erosion had occurred. But never mind.(And, btw, I have been following from the beginning, but not contributing much because I'm no geologist - you're jumping to conclusions again. "Oh well, what do I expect?

The only role for evidence in your world is for claiming you've looked at evidence. For example, when it's pointed out that floods don't leave behind the sort of evidence we find in the geological layers, you say it was a special flood and claim it behaved in any way you need it to have behaved. There's no evidence of any flood ever behaving in the way you claim. None of your geological claims are based upon evidence.The lack of an evidential foundation is why you and Mindspawn and Big Al and ICANT and Buzsaw and Mike the Wiz and Mark24 and Ray and Dawn Bertot and Whatever and Slevesque and Tranquility Base and so on agree on nothing except evolution is wrong. Without evidence to drive your thinking you're all free to go off in your own direction, and you do.What you have several times now called speculating on my part was merely describing the two possible ways sedimentary layers from a geologic period might be missing. It isn't speculation that it could occur because no layers were deposited, because we have evidence that sedimentary deposits only occur in the lowest elevations. And it isn't speculation that it could instead be because although layers were deposited they were later uplifted and eroded away, because we have evidence of this happening, too.But when you claim things like "By God ex nihilo about 6000 years ago" or like "This was a different kind of flood" or like "Fast moving rivers and catastrophic floods can carve meanders" you have no evidence whatsoever. It would be far too kind to even call it speculating. It's just making things up.Speaking of meandering, take a garden hose and adjust the sprayer to a fast, narrow spray, then get down at ground level in your garden and try to carve a meander. Good luck.--Percy

She appears to be backing off on "fast" in her claims about meanders. Yet another example of the ever-obedient majik fludde doing whatever she wants it to do. Simultaneously raging to an extent we cannot imagine and slowly flowing as a medium size river.

What I actually said (enough times that I grew tired of saying it) is that rock is fairly pliable on a scale of miles.I think you must have a severe misconception about the degree of bending of sedimentary layers. The bending of the sedimentary rock layers of the Grand Staircase is far less than you think from looking at this diagram because the horizontal and vertical scales are very different: This image is about 440 miles horizontally but only 3 miles at most vertically. The same distance that is about a mile vertically is about 30 miles horizontally. Were both the horizontal and vertical scales the same what looks like quite a bit of bending in the stratographic layers would appear almost flat.In other words, imagine the bending to be about 1/30^th as great as it appears in that diagram and you'll have a much better conception of the actual degree of bending.--Percy

Hi Percy I rescaled the diagram to about 1:1 A lot of the detail is lost, but you can follow the bands of color to get a better idea of what the actual slopes would be.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : piclink

And you are of course wrong.This appears to be your central blunder, the gross fatuous footling mistake to which all your other errors are mere frills and appendages. So it would be interesting and amusing to know how it got into your head: at some point you must have done something you mistook for reasoning to arrive at this staggeringly dumb conclusion. Would you mind giving us an insight into what was going on in your head that made you think it?

Hi Faith You could try reading them to see if they really are bald assertions or are supported by evidence. Except that the fault lines are in those locations and that they have been reactivated. Those fault lines also show in map here: You do realize, I hope, that your argument here is based entirely on your incredulity rather than on objective evidence (ie - showing that no other place on earth has less activity)?This is an interactive map of Quaternary earthquakes in the US: Different colors represent different ages ...Look at the Great Plains area -- N.Dakota, S.Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska -- an area much larger than the Colorado Plateau ... no fault zonesZoom in on the Colorado Plateau & Grand Canyon ... many fault zonesThe Great Plains would represent sedimentary deposition and large flat geography very similar to the layers of sedimentary deposits in the Colorado Plateau -- before uplift and tectonic stress build-up.Should there be earthquakes there? Not without cause -- earthquakes are a result of stress build-up in plates, so as long as there is no significant stress build-up one would be silly to expect earthquakes wouldn't you agree? See Message 819 to see a better representation of the actual layer slopes (rescaled to approximate 1 horizontal to 1 vertical dimensions) - a lot of detail is lost but you can follow the color bands to see the slopes. But "mystification" can be remedied with learning - start with the basics : perhaps roxrkool can recommend some entry level textbooks and if you are interested I can buy one for you from amazon (you'd have to message me an address).Now my knowledge of geography is weak, but I love learning new stuff so I could order one for myself too and we could do a Great Debate Book Review discussion of the book, both of us learning as we go along ...EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : piclink

I shall, though it's rather disappointing to have you suddenly lose interest again just when the discussion of this point seemed to be coming to a head. I wish to avoid the acrimonious tone of some of my previous posts, but I don't think it is out of line to suggest that the timing is somewhat suspicious. Your phrasing also feels a bit sneaky as it implies that I may consider myself the winner but in reality you do not concede the point despite being so far unable to counter it. So while I do believe I have gotten the best of this argument, I hope that you will either come back to it at some point (perhaps after further research on the subject) to attempt a counterargument or properly concede that you have no counterargument to attempt. In the meantime, the substantial issues with your model presented by the brooding dinosaur and the meandering Grand Canyon await your consideration.

Those of us longterm Faith-watchers know that concessions and threats of leaving can be ignored. Faith employs such tactics to distract and misdirect focus and attention away from any issue she has no answer for, but in reality she's conceding nothing. She will soon repeat the same claims she just conceded, perhaps even before this thread ends. So when you go on to say: Precisely!--Percy

As I say, I am trying to play nice but I am acutely aware that Faith's renewed lack of interest coincides quite suspiciously with being backed into a corner on the points of the dinosaur and the meanders. Though I do feel the urge to bother her until she steps up to the plate, I am trying to avoid any vituperation in my posts. But I will be more than happy to pick up where she left off if at some point in the future she makes the same claims that I have just finished refuting.

Let's try and think about how rare orogenies in the Grand Canyon area should be. One figure that leaps to mind is that, at a minimum, it's been 35 million years since the last orogeny in the whole of North America. However, using this as an argument would involve persuading Faith to believe true things about the past, and if we could do that we wouldn't be having this discussion.Instead, let's look to the present. There are only two orogenies going on today, the Alpine orogeny and the Andean orogeny. Most places are not undergoing orogeny; most places don't even have mountains.Now this tells us something. If each location frequently underwent orogeny, then you would expect there to be a lot of places undergoing orogeny; just as if it was common for individuals to wear purple hats, you would expect there to be a lot of people wearing purple hats at this present instant in time.What's more, we can say why there are so few ongoing orogenies. For after all we do know why the Andean and Alpine orogenies are happening: one is subductional, the other is collisional, and so both are occurring at converging boundaries of tectonic plates. Orogenies simply couldn't happen anywhere else: there is no motion within a plate; where plates diverge, you get a rift, not a mountain; where they slide past one another, you just get earthquakes; so really to have two converging plates is a necessary if not a sufficient condition for orogeny.Which is why they are presently rare, of course. A glance at a map of the world and its tectonic plates will show you that there are only a very few places in the world that could be having an orogeny right now. Arizona, you will note, is not one of them.So given what we know about the causes of orogenies, when can the Grand Canyon region expect to celebrate its next orogeny? Let's see if we can figure out a minimum date.At the present rate of continental drift, a new supercontinent will form in about 250,000,000 years. Unfortunately, it probably won't be the one we want. In order to get an orogeny in the Grand Canyon area, we'd want China to hit California, something like that. Apart from the whole problem with Siberia and Alaska getting in the way, we also have geologists telling us about the Atlantic closing up again, which is no use to us, or Asia crashing into the north end of North America, which again is NFG. However, there does seem to be a scenario whereby what is now Antarctic hits the west coast of North America. That's nice.So if luck is on our side, we might get a collisional orogeny on what is now the west coast of North America in as little as 250,000,000 years. But will it be big enough? Will it reach as far as the Grand Canyon region? Well, let's try and judge by the ongoing colisional orogeny we have as a paradigm: the Alps are only 120 miles wide. So the Grand Canyon region, sitting halfway along the northern end of Arizona, may well be too far inland. So 250,000,000 years is probably too soon for its next orogeny. Typical, isn't it? --- you wait a quarter of a billion years for an orogeny and then it gets no further than Las Vegas.But Arizona will get another chance. Suppose the new supercontinent of rifts round about the longitude of Arizona. There's no reason to think it will, but it might. This will not, of course, be a mountain-forming event, but, give it let's say another 250 million years, and eventually there'll be a collisional orogeny ... oh, in exactly the wrong place, as the east side of what is now North America smacks into Europe. Or possibly North Africa. (N.B: Why did I say another 250,000,000 years? Well, that's how long, at present rates, it will take us to get the next supercontinent, whatever it is. So if I say another 250,000,000 years between that supercontinent and the next one after that, I'm actually being conservative, because of course we've already had the opening up of the Atlantic, we're partway through our Wilson cycle.)But that was just the run-up. Now we're all set. All we need is for this new supercontinent to rift again, and either we'll get a subduction orogeny in the Arizona region, or, if not, we will definitely get a collisional orogeny when it hits the western side of the eastern United States. Again, let's conservatively say another 250,000,000 years for another Wilson cycle.So with a lot of luck, if everything goes just right for us, we might expect to see another orogeny in the Grand Canyon region in as little as 750,000,000 years. If we don't have that much luck, I guess we'll just have to wait another few Wilson cycles.This is all very back-of-the-envelope stuff, but it gives you some idea of the sort of factors that Faith's ignoring.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.