Why is evolution so controversial?

How could there ever have been a Geologic Timescale at all then, or a Geologic Column to the depth of what we see in the GC-GS area? That is, how could there have ever been an actual COLUMN, a STACK of sediments that so reliably seems to show the sequence of time periods from one to another? That is, you seem to believe that there were many risings and fallings of land and/or sea during the laying down of the whole thing, and yet the deposition seems to have continued quite consistently through that whole three miles of depth or more, or in other words through those hundreds of millions of years from Precambrian to most Recent time.I'm still trying to get this said so don't jump on any word problem you may find in it.

Fine, I can give it a guess, but you still need to explain how it got there at all if the schist was there first, the spatial problem. How do strata displace schist, or granite?So I'd guess the Supergroup wasn't in the direct path of the hot magma, perhaps because lower layers got fried before that level was reached -- The rock beneath and around the identified rock isn't usually identified itself: more schist and granite?Or because the strata in tilting slid beneath the upper stack which moved some strata into the magma's path and left some out of the magma's path. I have a picture of this in my mind and I haven't said it well, but maybe I'll try later. Some of it got metamorphosed, the rest didn't.In any case, again, I can't see how the strata could have been laid down afterward. The way it got moved and tilted is still my best guess. Of course it's later, but that doesn't necessarily mean a LOT later. How about months later? OK, I'm finding this too hard to follow right now, I'll have to come back to it. Which rocks, and how does this sequence make it possible for the strata to be laid down in neat horizontal sequence afterward? I'm very glad to hear it. I still have the problem of seeing how strata could have been laid down so neatly horizontal and parallel over such a lumpy base. Again I'm going to have to come back to this. Yeah but in my scenario all that sort of thing could be the result of the tectonic and volcanic upheaval that occurred after those strata were laid down, tilting and sliding things, abrading surfaces between each other and so on. If you said it before in a post full of insulting remarks I may not have read it. FYI Which I'm supposing, aren't I? Or perhaps you need to be clearer about what this would look like. I have some idea of what overthrusts are like from various online diagrams. They seem to be a more extreme tectonic folding of the strata than is seen in say angular unconformities where the folding may be more or less vertical, a series of sinuous bends, but the overthrust makes a bigger fold that lies more horizontal. The Great Unconformity is actually unusually horizontally tilted by comparison with other angular unconformities. Just a thought. If you think it relevant, sure.

Well, I'm an unusual YEC in that I try to explain what happened beneath the Tapeats as all the same event with the massive erosion from the Kaibab on up, including the cutting of the canyon and all the rest of it, which I think of as occurring just before the receding of the Flood or shortly afterward. Most YECs accept the idea that the Great Unconformity and everything else beneath the Tapeats was already there before the Flood began, and explain all the rest from there on up by the Flood. I put quite a bit of thought at one time into angular unconformities, starting with Siccar Point, as the buckling and tilting of a lower segment of strata while the upper stack was still in place, and that's still my favorite way of looking at it.So don't blame YECs in general for my own attempts to explain things by the Flood that they know better than to try.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

[I am returning to this part of your post which I left unanswered before] Some observations/questions:1) There had to be sedimentary rock prior to the Vishnu schist, for the schist to form, correct? So why not the strata of the Supergroup?It takes both heat and pressure to form, doesn't it? Or just heat? Wouldn't there also have to be pressure from above for it to form? Heat from the magma from below plus pressure from above? But you have the granite forming afterward, suggesting the magma didn't occur until afterward so where did the heat come from?.The magma intruded into the schist and became granite, meaning of course it intruded after the schist was in place, but couldn't it have intruded before the schist was fully schist, when it was still sedimentary rock, and contributed to its becoming schist?I come around to what I started with: The sedimentary rock from which the schist formed had to be there before the magma eruption which created the schist and the granite. If this sedimentary rock wasn't the strata of the Supergroup, what was it?2) How could the Zoroaster granite form at all if there wasn't pressure from above, such as the strata from the Tapeats on up, to keep it confined? That is, shouldn't it have simply erupted in a lava flow covering the whole area, covering whatever was there before the Great Unconformity and the mountain range that supposedly built from that and so on? You've got the Vishnu there first, but the Vishnu doesn't intervene between the granite and the Tapeats.In other words, the fact that there is granite there looks to me like evidence for the stack above it being already in place.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'm not getting the picture here. The fault made it possible for the sedimentary rock to be metamorphosed? So the Vishnu couldn't have been formed from the Unkar, part of the Supergroup, because of something to do with their content which you ascribe to different origins, although there they are cheek by jowl? In other words you have to make up a source for which there is no clear evidence, whereas what I suggested has a clear source in the magma which is clearly present beneath these formations, which DOES come from the mantle anyway. Actually it's always easier to believe in huge spans of time, that seems to cover just about any contingency imaginable, but yes, I'd guess there is no need for that much time to cool the rocks. A totally fictitious ocean basin for which there is no evidence whatever is the supposed source of sedimentary rock which metamorphosed into the Vishnu schist.This idea plus the heat from the mantle answer above are clearly the product of Old Earth assumptions and not actual evidence. More fiction, edge, more speculation based on your Old Earth assumption and not on evidence. Heat flows were "probably" higher at that time, you don't know but it seems probable on OE assumptions, and an "unknown," i.e., purely fictitious made-up, amount of rock must be postulated to have existed, for which there remains not a shred of actual evidence.So this creates the necessary pressure to keep the magma confined so that it can form granite? Must have been a LOT of rock. Maybe on the order of the two mile depth of the strata from the Tapeats up? Interesting how the granite seems sort of to press up against it too, kind of flattened out at the top there. Magma doesn't always incinerate everything in its path it seems, judging by the dikes and sills one sees penetrating through the strata here and there, even when they go all the way up through to the very top as at the north end of the Grand Staircase where they then flow out into a lava field.A side thought occurs: that there is a magma dike associated with Siccar Point too, quite exposed at the front of the formation. Just something to wonder about in connection with angular unconformities in general. Another completely made-up happening: if it was there it's now gone. But of course I don't think that happened, I think the magma was confined beneath the Tapeats because of the great weight of strata above it and I don't see that you have accounted for the necessary pressure. Nor do I. What is an "oceanic intrusion?" Sounds like something that might fit well with a worldwide Flood scenario. I have no intention of ignoring anything, I'm simply addressing one aspect of the situation at a time. I already suggested an explanation for the erosion. You don't need to, your Old Earth assumptions supply all the justification you need for your fictional scenario.I suppose I'll deal with your other posts next but as usual the situation is only too clear. Your fictions are going to trump anything I might suggest, because that's the way it goes with a science that deals with the prehistoric past, which is built out of speculations and interpretations. I do keep being astonished at the agility of such purely fictional explanations. Comes down to Whoever has the power wins.And of course I "deserve" to be treated to extreme personal insults because I question the thinking of geologists, just their theories, not their persons. So that's the way it is. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Don't see any evidence for your assumptions, they're just the usual Old Earth assumptions, conjured out of thin air. You have about half a dozen purely fictitious speculations in that post for which there is no evidence whatever, based on your own wording, ALL OF WHICH I POINTED OUT IN MY RESPONSE, given in answer to my speculations based on what is actually present. You've certainly provided no source of the pressure needed to form the granite, though there is ample pressure from the weight of the strata in my scenario.But whatever, yes we're done here, done to a crisp I'd say. Though I may yet come back to earlier posts.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The fact of the matter in my case is that years before I became a Christian, when I still considered myself an atheist, I read the usual popular accounts of evolution and at times tried to track down the evidence for it. It always seemed to disappear into assertions and assumptions. That didn't keep me from continuing to believe in it, I had no religious objections to it, but it was frustrating, and once I did become a Christian and read some books on creationism I could see why it's so frustrating: the evidence for it IS only assertions and assumptions.

I've made case after case based on various observations of such things as the strata, the fossils and the decrease in genetic diversity that is the necessary result of microevolution. ABE: I emphasize: These arguments have been made on observations of facts, not theory, not assumptions etc. /ABE I grant that both of these phenomena appear to support an Old Earth, at least an older Earth than the Biblical Young Earth. There are phenomena on both sides of the question it seems to me. I SHOWED that some are making unbased assumptions. And I KNOW the Bible is the word of God.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The way it was put it was a bald assertion, even a wild guess by the sound of it.That 280 my statement is REALLY bizarre. I'm going with that quote that came up somewhere back there that said they were getting false readings on the age of the basement rocks of the GC perhaps because of water content or something like that. if water content can mess up a reading, just THINK of all the errors you guys are refusing to consider.

Whooee, was that INSPIRING! A lot of assertive words there, declaring the status quo, but not much in the way of truth.

Why not. Here's his post: Well, it's a thoroughly ossified thoroughly accepted not-to-be-questioned principle of modern biological science, assumed and embellished at every turn, but "bedrock" in the sense that it actually contributes any meaningful knowledge of biology? No. All it contributes is more fleshing out of the evolution assumption. It hangs on biology like a parasite getting fatter all the time but biology benefits not a whit.Source: Intelligent observation. I'm not sure how to read this. Science is to be defined as learning how evolution happens, or science is contributing to knowledge about how evolution happens. Either way I have to object. Again, evolution is a parasite on the sciences, the only learning it contributes is an elaboration of the fantasy it embodies.Source: Cynical me. Certainly true there's no debate about this, it's as good as planted in concrete, but "established" of course raises the question "by what means" and the answer is by assumption and habit, certainly not by real evidence.Source: Creationist wisdom. Not among the True Believers, that's for sure. Evolution is not true science, it's an elaborated endlessly elaboratable mental construct built out of hot air, so it's really best that it not be foisted on children, but actually many people don't mind if they learn the fantasy TOO. Ooo what a jaundiced paranoid viewpoint that is. In my experience there ARE creationist scientists who do object scientifically to evolution, and many of them don't get into the political angle of it at all. Evolution is taken for science, unfortunately, terrible flimflam that. This is true, sad to say.Source: Honest perspicacious creationist me. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.