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I m pretty sure I've seen them. And I'm pretty sure they don't tell you what you seem to think.

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If they're the ones in this post: Message 448 then they do indeed only show age - and that at the level of geological periods.Personally I'd expect to see the following if almost all rocks were deposited by a world-wide flood.1) Evaporites and lava flows which cooled under air would only be seen at the top or the bottom of the column. Neither could form underwater. Undisturbed surface features, coral reefs and developed paleosols would only be found at the bottom. Likewise angular unconformities.2) There would be an upward-fining layer, perhaps a several yards thick containing a large majority of fossils, all sorted hydrodnamically. There would be no unconformities of any sort within this layer. This would be the majority of the3) If the majority of geological features were formed by a flood all mountains should be clearly pre-flood structures, excepting volcanoes.4) Geological evidence of continental drift would be absent. There's no time for significant drift. Any strata matched between continents would simply continue across the seabed, except where they have been pushed apart by rifts, and that for only a few kilometers at most.I will note however that there s a huge difference between trying to imagine what a flood would do, and trying to force-fit the assumption of a flood to our understanding of the geological evidence. Only by taking the former approach can we work out what we should expect to see.

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Edge can confirm, but about the layers above the Pensylvanian carbonates, I believe the top layer of the diagram is the actual top layer, and I don't believe Edge was saying that there are layers above that layer today that are not shown on the diagram. I think he was saying that he doesn't know what happened to the layers above, but the undetailed answer is that it was erosion.

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I think that Edge was only saying that it was unclear what was there today. The datum line represents a past surface, and the diagram isn't meant to show any overlying rock.The lecture material here gives a lot more info.
Salt Tectonics of the Paradox Basin

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The term "datum line" was clear from context. It's just that there's nothing in that diagram indicating that the top line is a datum line, that it's just a line of reference and not an actual surface.

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Edge said that it was a datum line. And I'm pretty sure that he is correct and that there are strata not shown. See the link in my previous post for a load more diagrams.

But why is it evidence for the Flood? Jumping to conclusions about cherry-picked sites and then universalising those conclusions will emphasise the cherry picking and conclusion jumping rather than leading to the truth.So make an honest argument which doesn,t rely on jumping to conclusions, or cherry picking if you can.

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How about thinking about the timing, WHEN all this happened, because that has enormous implications for Old Earth theory. Which

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The timing of the erosion would not in any way affect the time it took to lay down the strata. So no, your argument is false here. More likely in every case the timing of the erosion disproves your views because it started way too early to even possibly fit.

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So you all prefer to blow off the obvious implication of the fact that there was no such disturbance for hundreds of millions of years

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Pardon us for not agreeing with one of your assertions before you even make it, yet alone show it's true,

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Every time I see an example of it such as those hills of sculpted strata in the movie I'm struck with the obvious implication that it makes the millions of years bogus and the Flood the best explanation of the phenomena.

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The fact that you jump to a silly conclusion does kat mean that it is an implied by the evidence. Again you need to make a case, rather than complaining that people don't automatically agree with everything you say.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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The MASSIVE erosion of the entire stack of layers all at one time is something else entirely and it's fantastic evidence against the Old Earth and for the Young Earth and for the receding Flood as the source of the massive erosion. Since this is such fantastic evidence it calls all the OE dating into question. And from what you've written here I have to suppose that you don't know what I'm talking about.

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Perhaps you'd like to support the claim that this erosion happened "all at once" - especially as it's erosion that is still going on. Explain how it's connected to the Flood. And explain how it could possibly be evidence against the old Earth. The strata had to be present before they were eroded. They took hundreds of millions of years to be deposited and lithified. Even if they were eroded "all at once" that fact would not change.

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Of course extrapolating backwards would solve the problem, quite easily of course, because it's basically stacking the deck

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But in the absence of other evidence it is the most sensible approach. Much more so than assuming that erosion started as soon as the youngest surviving rock was deposited (which really IS an attempt to stack the deck).

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Not as soon as deposited but as soon as exposed

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Then you need decent estimates of the tine that the rock was exposed. Arguing about the date that the material was deposited as in Message 479 is really pointless.You also need a very good idea of WHAT was exposed. Taking the visible talus skirts as marking the boundary of the original exposure is also foolish, because the erosive forces will also work on the talus, removing it or eroding it further.

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and I think the receding Flood water exposed all the cliffs of the Grand Staircase, and cut the canyons there, and the Grand Canyon as well, and the buttes that became Monument Valley.

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Believe what you like, but don't bring question-begging assumptions into your arguments.

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ABE: If you want evidence that all this occurred at the same time I'd point to what I think is comparable amounts of scree in the erosion skirts or talus of all the formations.

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That's not really a good argument. First, you're only guessing at the amount (and I'd be very surprised if any hoodoo has a massive skirt like the buttes in Monument Valley). Second you don't have the numbers to show that it would be meaningful even if it was true.

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All that's true but long periods are not required on Flood timing

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It's more accurate to say that Flood timing does not provide the long periods required.

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The point is that if all the strata are in place before this massive erosion occurs it means that massive erosion didn't occur at any point during their laying down

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No, it doesn't. It quite obviously doesn't. You can't say "if something is happening now then nothing similar ever happened before" That's silly. And while you might raise quibbles there's no substantial difference between that and your argument as you've expressed it above.

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You can see nice neat strata in those hills and buttes in the movie I mentioned, forms carved out of what was of course continuous strata everywhere in between originally

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Just remember that when you make your age estimates...

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Of course it can all be rationalized as you all do in OE terms but the simple fact I keep harping on is really very good evidence that OE timing is wrong because otherwise you WOULD have massive erosion at other points in the stack.

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But we DO. And let us remember that in two of the cases your whole point is that the rock formations we see - the hoodoos and the buttes will disappear in a relatively short period of time. You won't see them after they're gone.

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Just hundreds of millions of years of no massive erosion and then suddenly kawham huge cliffs, canyons, buttes, layers and layers of strata eroded away completely, down to scoured surfaces of Kaibab (Permian) or whatever the sandstone in Monument Valley is. Every time I notice this I'm amazed that the OE explanation continues to reign.

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Sadly for you, imaginative fantasies aren't good arguments.

First I didn't say "identical". Second you haven't provided any real basis for comparison at all. I'd pretty much expect a hoodoo to be destroyed by "comparable" erosion to the pictured butte. And that doesn't even address the main issue that you need more than a rough eyeballing of the talus through photographs or film to get anything meaningful.

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It's an observational thing.

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It's not something you can observe by looking at present-day erosion. And how would you "observe" that a hoodoo had been at a site hundreds of millions of years ago, before erosion destroyed it anyway ?

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I gave the pertinent information.

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Then why do you go on and on about the sites where this erosion has occurred recently when that is not in the slightest bit pertinent to the question of whether similar erosion occurred in the distant past ?

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You can SEE that it didn't happen before.

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As I point out above and in my previous post that isn't true, and it certainly can't be seen by looking at present day erosion.

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That's my point.

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Then you've worked very hard at obfuscating it - and the evidence you've been talking about doesn't - and couldn't - support it.Edited by PaulK, : Minor corrections and clarifications

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You keep insisting on talking about everything but the point I was originally making in Message 448 about the MASSIVE EROSION,

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I think the failure to provide a useful link here is rather diagnostic of your problem, Faith. You assume that you know something, don't make basic and simple checks and get it completely wrong. Here's how to do it: Message 448Now the problem with your post is that you just claim that somehow this erosion has implications for the old earth - but even when questioned you don't explain what these "implications" are or how you get to them from the observations.Now in that post you don't address the nature of the erosion or the timescales nor any evidence that would allow us to determine them. When that evidence is discussed you don't exactly have a solid case there either. And even if you could get support from those points you still wouldn't have a good argument against an old Earth.So no, your message Message 448 does not stand as evidence against an Old Earth. And that's not because of any bias on my part - it's entirely due to your failure to support your opinions in that post and in later discussion.Let me make a very basic and simple point that I've made before. Just because you assume that the Flood did something doesn't meant that it's evidence for the Flood. You would need to look at the evidence in more detail and show that the Flood DID do it. In your case that is especially true because you are so heavily biased in favour of the Flood that you are likely to make that assumption whether it is reasonable or not.In short, learn how to rationally argue your point instead of attacking people for disagreeing with your unsupported and biased opinions.

The link works now, because the Moose fixed it for you, as mentioned in the edit log.