Summations Only

I wonder if there are any courageous EvCers here, who know that what I've illustrated is in fact a solid definition of "parallel," who would step out of the shadows and say so.

That would be someone who knows nothing about geology, geometry or science in general. There may be a few of those types around.

I think it is plain perverse of anyone to pretend not to see this or deny it once they've seen it.

The layers of the Grand Canyon are NOT parallel nor are they continuous. There is erosion between the layers, unconformities, variation of thickness, layers that terminate at other layers. I think its perverse for anyone to claim the layers of the GC are parallel.

All that occurred after all the strata were stacked, which is evidenced by their parallel form which follows the rising and falling of the land.

Its not so much that we disagree with your description above but that it provides evidence of a universal flood that is disputed.

HBD

The block of strata broke off as it was pushed up against the Tapeats, and the erosion caused by the abrasion between it and the Tapeats collected along the contact line as it slid for some distance, but also collected beneath the block itself. The whole area is raised up, so there is room there for it to collect where the strata block was and get metamorphosed into Vishnu schist.

The Supergroup is the "strata block" that slid under the Tapeats? And this created the material that was metamorphosed into Vishnu schist? Question ... do you know how thick the Vishnu schist is? I looked for an answer to that but only found "unknown thickness."

There isn't as much eroded material there in my scenario as you think there should be.

I am thinking there couldn't possibly be enough eroded material for your scenario to produce the Vishnu schist from the sliding contact between the Supergroup and the Tepeats. But I am probably just misunderstanding your argument (as we all do).

HBD

I think it just contributed to the Vishnu schist.

Except that would produce a contact surface between the original material and the new material. Do we see that in the exposed formation?

HBD

the Vishnu should found along the contact between the GC Supergroup and the Tapeats; in other words it is the Great Unconformity.

But, I was understanding her idea to be that the ground up material was back-filling a gap underneath the Supergroup after it was tilted. But there is no indication that the Vishnu schist was formed in two separate events.

Idk, I guess I just don't understand her argument .

There should be a very thick zone of crushed rock all along the Great Unconformity; one that contains both supergroup rocks and Tapeats.

I think there is though, but only at the contact and above into the Tepeats. It does not extend below the Great Unconformity. I think Percy's point is that a whole lot of material that would be the Supergroup is missing. Material that would have been under the entire area before tilting and sliding and whatever else occurred. Where could it have gone? It didn't turn into Vishnu which I think is what Faith is suggesting (not sure though).

HBD

What I mean about "parallel" I STILL mean. If you don't like the word and can get over your pedantic nitpickery and see what I'm TRYING to say, then find me another word. Sheesh.

Sheesh yourself. I know exactly what you are trying to say and I am telling you that you are wrong.

There is nothing in the natural world that is mathematically precisely parallel that I know of, except perhaps at the atomic level, certainly not at the level of messy Geology. And yet the word does have common application to natural phenomena.

You are missing the entire point of this "quibble." I am not talking about being mathematically precise and perhaps parallel could be used to describe the situation (although I wouldn't use it to describe the entire cross section, just specific areas). But describing them as parallel is not appropriate to the point you are trying to make. What you are trying to establish is that the entire stack was laid down in a single event and if you could, that would actually be a convincing argument. IF the entire sequence of layers in the GC were laid down in a single event that would be a huge step forward in establishing a worldwide flood.

However, what we see in the layers of the GC is that

quote:

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There is erosion between the layers, unconformities, variation of thickness, layers that terminate at other layers.

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These features indicate multiple depositional environments with changes in sea level, erosion at the surface, transgressions/regressions and tectonic activity (albeit relatively minor).

SO you think that by calling them "parallel" that is evidence that they were put down in a single depositional event, but it's NOT. They are not parallel in any sense of the word that indicates that they are they result of a single event. That is my objection to your using the word "parallel" not just some "pedantic nitpickery" about a simple definition.

Could we please stop this idiotic semantic quibble.

Yea, sure. Please use an argument that is relevant to the point you are making. How do the features of the Grand Canyon indicate that they were laid down in a single event? "Parallel" fails to be convincing since it is not really an accurate description of the situation.

HBD

there is no reason whatever that such things would not have occurred in the laying down of sediments by one huge water event.

I can think of a few.

In fact such things should be expected.

Establish that such things should be expected. That's all any of us are asking.

Except that there are NO visible unconformities so you have to be talking about the invisible kind which simply don't exist.

Sure, invisible evidence. That is what edge, Percy, Moose, myself and several others have all been talking about this whole time.

The erosion is easily explained as caused by runoff between the layers after they were in place.

This is visible evidence ????

Variation of thickness would be expected in the Flood and so would layers that reduce to nothing and terminate in other layers.

Why? The law of horizontality says otherwise. This is something you need to establish would happen according to natural laws.

That ought to be obvious HBD.

It's not. Why would it obvious when it violates physical laws?

The science of geology does not support a global, one-time event. Of course, you are free to continue to believe - I won't judge. But if you expect that you are going to show that the science does support a global, one-time event you are going to have to examine the details and show how all your ideas follow natural laws. If they don't follow natural laws, how can they be scientific?

HBD

OK, show me one of those unconformities you are talking about.

I guess I don't see why you think the unconformity (discontinuities) between the Redwall and the Mauv or the one between the Redwall and the Supai group. What about between the Kaibab and the Moenkopi formation?

Here ...

In all there are 13 known erosion surfaces (unconformities) in the Grand Staircase area.

????

HBD

I don't know how to explain it but it doesn't look like surface erosion to me.

And those shown on your diagram seem to be similarly unnatural looking if I may use that term, meaning also too smooth and regular, unless, again, that's to be chalked up to schematic drawing.

None of it looks like the kind of erosion that would form on the surface to me.

How can you tell from looking at a simple diagram. If you want to contest the standard geologist interpretation you will need to look at the actual rocks or at least read up on the scientific literature that describes the contact surfaces and find out why they interpret them as erosional contacts. You can't draw conclusions like that from looking at a diagram.

The diagram shows where in the stack the unconformities are located and the relative amount of material that is thought to be missing. It is a generalized and simplified drawing designed to give an overall perspective.

So I don't know but I also don't think the conventional interpretation is very convincing.

You have dismissed it because you don't want to accept it, not from any real examination of the evidence.

And interestingly it's all carved into limestone, every one of them. I suspect it's got something to do with the chemistry of limestone, meaning, again, its original sedimentary form.

Limestone is very erodible particularly when the acidity of the solute increases.

But I'd also argue that the evidence I've already given -- about the way the strata lie as shown on that cross section, plus the other evidences of nothing much happening until the whole stack was laid down, after which kaboom everything happened at once -- is enough to call Old Earth explanations into question. The "erosional surfaces" are trivial in the big picture and need another explanation than the usual one.

That's like me showing you a picture of the earth from outer space and telling you that it is a perfect sphere. To which you reply "no, its a spheroid - it is larger around the equator than around the poles." I tell you that the images I presented are pretty convincing in that they look perfectly round. You then say that we can actually measure the diameters and show that the equator is larger. To which I reply "But all those actual measurements are trivial in the big picture." Pretty silly huh?

The big picture is formed FROM these "trivial" details - NOT from a simplified schematic.

It's also interesting, I think, that your diagram shows the Vishnu schist, or the "Vishnu group" to be filling in the space beneath and surrounding the Supergroup, which we've just been talking about. And there's enough "metasedimentary" rock found in that formation to suggest, to me of course if nobody else, a connection between the two.

You would have to explain how those blocks could have tilted while being lifted from underneath. If a gap formed underneath the block, there would be nothing to push against. And, as has already been explained, the Vishnu is made up of different material than the Supergroup. Your tilting after the upper layers were present doesn't make physical sense. What makes sense is they were tilted and eroded BEFORE the layers above were deposited.

I have a couple of other things I want to cover but don't have time right now. Limestone cave formation for one and how that differs from the erosional contact we can see in the strata. The other thing is these different erosional and depositional environments are dependent on the amount of energy in the system and how those energy levels that are recorded in the strata do not match what we would expect in a great flood. Percy touched on this concept in Message 336 when he talked about spring floods. But it will have to wait till later.

HBD

there is no evidence whatever for ascribing any time period to the phenomena illustrated, that's all an artifact of the Old Earth theory, not borne out by the facts shown in the diagram.

Faith, this is silly. Even you recognize that if a layer is deposited on top of another layer then it was laid down AFTER the previous one - not simultaneously. Each layer would represent a period in time. What you disagree with is the extent of those time periods. Rather than accepting the long periods of time assigned by geologists, you assign very, very, very short periods of time, which is one of the physical impossibilities that we keep mentioning.

I also think that you would say we have no way to correlate a layer of a particular age in one region to a layer of the same age in another area. Again, this would be wrong ... Geology 101. And again, this correlation doesn't require assignment of long ages. They can be correlated whether they span a billion years or one single year. The age assignments come from other lines of evidence besides sequence order.

HBD

Percy, you may find this guys blog interesting. I really haven't had time* to scrutinize it, but it seems very well done. He ties more recent tectonic activity and geological features back to Pangaea and even Rodinia. He has diagrams and illustrations that I haven't found elsewhere. For example, here is an image of the Grand Staircase with all the layers from the Vishnu to Bryce Canyon. It also has a longitudinal section with only 1.5 X vertical exaggeration, which illustrates what you have been saying about the angle of the uplifted layers.

Another example of the work he has done

quote:

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Here’s the same photo with guide-lines added for identification. Notice the Great Unconformity (upper right) between the overlying Tapeats Sandstone and the Granite Gorge Metamorphic Suite and a “lesser” unconformity (upper center) between the Tapeats and the underlying Shinumo Quartzite. The Cremation Fault runs obliquely to the line of sight in the photo.

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I am really impressed so far!

Anyway ... Here is a link to an article about the Vishnu schist and the Great Unconformity.

HBD

Edited by herebedragons, : typo

Faith is not constrained by evidence, but by an idiosyncratic subset of a religion.

To be fair, Faith is one of the best creationists I have ever debated with as far as dealing with evidence. She honestly does try to look at the evidence and make sense of it - just usually in light of her own hypothesis. Her problem is (besides the fact that she starts off knowing the "right" answer and tries to interpret evidence to fit that preconceived notion) that she wants to limit herself to a small subset of the evidence. If the only evidence we had was the cross section of the Grand Canyon area, she would have some reasonable arguments. But she is not willing to look at the issue on a global or even regional scale and consider ALL available evidence.

The other problem I see is that she doesn't have a strong scientific foundation to build on. Sometimes it takes a lot of work to get basic physical principals across to her. Sometimes it's hard to know where to start and what misunderstanding needs to be addressed.

But again, one of the best creationists I have debated with - at least she tries to be scientific. Keep being patient and keep explaining the science of geology. You are quite knowledgeable and even if she doesn't "get it" it helps the rest of us. I am a biologist, not a geologist and have not even taken a geology course. But I have learned a lot just being involved in these debates about the GC.

HBD

I would very much like to if a location could be selected that would be appropriate and I'm not sure one exists.

Any location in the world would be appropriate for discussing geological features and their relation to a global flood. I have brought this up before ... if there was a global flood 4300 years ago, and it did do the things you are claiming it did in the GC, then there should be Grand Canyon-like structures everywhere in the world. The fact that another "appropriate location" doesn't exist anywhere else should be a huge red flag.

It rapidly gets too complex and requires an enormous amount of time, which doesn't fit into a debate thread.

It does get complex, yes. Sorry, that's science. People spend their whole careers studying a small piece of the puzzle. It would make discussion much easier if you didn't think those that study the actual rocks were liars and deceivers. (and yes you do think that and it shows when you say "they only interpret it that way to uphold their Old Earth Agenda").

what would be the point of moving on to other locations before I get people to see my argument there in the first place?

I think we all understand what your point is, we disagree that the point is valid. You think that if we just understood it we would agree because the point is so air-tight. But that's not the case and a lot of the reason is because your point doesn't take into account ALL the evidence. However. there is a lot we CAN learn from the Grand Canyon; it is a spectacularly preserved (and exposed) record of earth's. One of the things we can learn is that there WAS NOT a global flood 4300 years ago.

You mentioned that you have never seen the GC. You really should make it a life goal. No picture, internet page or discussion forum can even come close to presenting the enormity of the scale that is the Grand Canyon. I seriously doubt any one has ever stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon and said "Huh, it's much smaller than I imagined." If you have not seen the GC in person, then you have NO IDEA of the scale involved. Get There!!!

He hardly ever gives more than a brief cryptic statement about anything and then if I say it's incomprehensible he accuses me of all kinds of antiscientific perfidy along with uppityness that refuses to curtsey to the Scientist.

It's obvious that edge has significant geological training. It can be difficult for a professional to put complex terminology in a way that makes sense to a lay person.

Who needs it?

Honestly, you do. It seems to me that edge is trying to show you how much you don't know about geology so that you will realize that you are not in a position to overturn 200 years of work with your over simplified, unsupported ideas. I think that's fair.

HBD

edge gave you some more technical reasons why this doesn't work in Message 392, but I'll try to come at this from a more layperson's perspective.

If you are proposing that the Great Unconformity is a slip fault, I thought this was your idea and I gave this some thought the other day. Another thing that made me consider this idea was the similarity between the Lewis Overthrust and the Grand Staircase section.

Notice on the left side of both diagrams the strata is bend upwards in a very similar manner. In the Lewis Overthrust, the entire block above the red line was pushed over the rocks below. Could this have happened in the GC?

First, note that the Supergroup blocks are tilted the wrong way for the GC-GS block to have slid left to right. Also notice that the fault in the middle of the diagram (Servier fault, I believe) has slipped in the opposite direction one would expect if the block was pushed left to right. And finally, the Unkar group intrudes (probably not a geologically correct term here) into the Tapeats and even into the Tonto group. Had this block been shoved, it would shear off this 'intrusion.'

Your scenario seems to suggest that it was the rock below the Great Unconformity that was compressed. First, what reason would you have to think this was still "soft" and not metamorphosed?

Here is another cross section of the area with more detail of the Supergroup faulting.

Where are the folds? What indicates that this was compression from the side? Again, the slip surfaces of the faults are in the wrong direction for being pushed from the side. If the lateral force came from left to right, the fist wedge on the left side that would be forced up. Its dropping instead.

This is thought to be a product of rifting, not compression.

Red arrows indicate direction of forces. These would be the mountain range of the Supergroup that was eroded down prior to the laying down of the Tapeats etc...

Read more about it Here

another note: Here is an example of why it is important to consider ALL of the evidence - on a global perspective. (from the blogpost referenced above)

quote:

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THE UNKAR GROUP
During the Middle Proterozoic from about 1,255 to 1,100 million years ago, the largely-mudrock of the Unkar Group (red arrow) is thought to have been deposited intracratonically in an environment of extensional tectonism and sedimentation. Its deposition was in tectonic response to plate-margin deformation and crustal shortening during the Grenville Orogen (yellow). The Grenville was the final, protracted mountain-building and crust-forming event in the formation of Rodinia. Deposits within the Grenville Province are found worldwide (yellow).

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This is quickly becoming too complicated

HBD

The Grand Canyon area has the virtue of being clear enough to demonstrate that nothing tectonic happened between the Cambrian and the Tertiary

"nothing tectonic happened" in the Grand Canyon. Those other "more complex" locations show that there was plenty of tectonic activity in other locations.

Geology is going to have a whole bunch of stuff supposedly proving events in certain time periods from such messy situations

You still miss the whole point of science. Its not about "proving" past events. Why do we believe that a particular area was covered by a calm sea? Because the area has limestone deposits and we know that limestone is deposited in calm seas. There is nothing "proved." Our understanding of the past is based on our understanding of the present. If someone discovered that limestone is formed when calcium carbonate rains from the sky, it would totally change our idea of the history of an area that had limestone deposits.

I don't understand half of what he says, and that's from his communication problem not my level of knowledge.

You know, I don't understand half of what he says either. But why is it his fault that I don't know the terms and processes he is talking about? If I really want to understand, I either look it up or ask "What do you mean by ***? Could you explain *** a little more? I don't understand."

This is not how to do science. Science asks "What does the evidence tell us?" Geology does not start with the premise that the earth is old and then set out to prove it. It takes the evidence and tries to paint a picture of the past using interpretations of that evidence.

And don't think interpretation is something sinister. Here is the evidence:

Interpretation: Rifting, not compression is what caused faulting in the Supergroup.

I know the Flood occurred, and I'm 90% sure the Grand Canyon shows how.

I am 99.9999% sure the GC does not support a global flood 4300 years ago (.0001% because I am open to being wrong). Just go there and see the scale of it and then try to imagine all that sediment being laid down in one year. And that canyon being cut in a few hundred years. No way.

Nothing more to say on this particular subject.

What subject do you have nothing more to say on?

You asked for my assessment and you read the second sentence and stopped because I said "slip fault." I also talked about another scenario where I didn't say "slip fault." Either way there would have had to be slipping at the Great Unconformity, No?

Your post is useless to me... Not reading it. Go away.

Hey you've won, go celebrate or something. You've chased the creationist away with your jargon and your rank-pulling and your namecalling. You've made this discussion as odious as it could possibly be and as useless. Have a good time. I'll take up my argument elsewhere.

There was no tectonic activity in other locations during the laying down of the strata. No you have not shown that.

the objections range from the sublime to the ridiculous, even a long utterly insane exchange about the meaning of the word "parallel."

ABE:

Go celebrate with edge. You've won the debate.

/ABE

You are so immature. I think I will go away and play with some other kids now.

HBD

Edited by herebedragons, : No reason given.