Summations Only

Scree is exposed to weathering, which means things like wind, rain, temperature variations and freeze/thaw cycles. Even buried scree is vulnerable, though to a lesser degree, to weathering. Particles flake off the scree, water erodes and carry some away, grinding against other pieces of scree creates flakes, and over time each piece becoming smaller and smaller. The tiers upon which the scree rests are also subject to erosion, and buried scree eventually loses its supporting platform and falls to the next tier, eventually reaching the valley floor. The tiny particles that flake off the scree become the soil of the valley floor. Yes, of course. In time the West Mitten Butte will erode down to nothing.The top of the butte represents former valley floor. The current valley floor was once a thousand feet higher than it is now. But when the region was uplifted it became an area of net erosion. Riverbeds crisscrossed the valley and gradually eroded it down, creating canyons that gradually widened and joined, leaving a valley of buttes behind. Almost all the material that once filled the current valley is now gone, only a few buttes remaining. Yes, clearly the layers form tiers upon which the scree rests. If you wanted to know whether the current amount of scree represents the accumulations of a hundred thousand years or a million years or ten million years, then yes, we need to know precisely how much scree is present, precisely how fast it erodes off the sides of the butte, and precisely how fast it weathers away. But if you just want to know if that much scree could accumulate in a mere 4300 years then the answer is no, there's far too much scree to have accumulated in so brief a period of time. The entire valley floor is scree and the particles weathered from scree. That's true, you didn't provide an estimate, but I did provide a lower bound for you. Niagara Falls used to erode back about 5 feet per year before the diversion of water for electric power generation. The floor of Monument Valley used to be at least a thousand feet higher than it is today, and it is miles across. How do you imagine your flood eroded away an entire valley a thousand feet deep and at least 50,000 feet across in just a year when Niagara Falls can only manage 5 feet? Yes, someone did happen to mention that there actually are some types of rock that can form by drying, but they aren't the types of rock that make up most sedimentary layers, which are limestone, siltstone, sandstone and shale in this region and in most regions throughout the world. These types of layers form by deep burial, compaction, and cementation.I've read ahead in this thread, and so I won't reply to your Message 488 because it looks like you figured out that the White Cliffs of Dover are eroding off their face, not off their top (at least not significantly). The English Channel widens every year.--Percy

Ringo already addressed this, but it doesn't hurt to say it another way. The region didn't begin eroding until it was uplifted some tens of millions of years ago. At the time the surface that would eventually become Monument Valley was a thousand feet higher, and what would eventually become the buttes were just buried sedimentary layers miles and miles in extent. Rivers crisscrossed the valley cutting it into canyons whose sides eroded away, eventually joining and continuing to erode and finally leaving behind only the buttes we see today. That's not a bad estimate. Another way of looking at it is that these buttes were once as wide as all of Monument Valley. It did take millions and millions of years to erode them away to their current breadth of only thousands of feet. There must have been many more buttes millions of years ago, but they've eroded away to dust.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Improve phrasing.

Hi Faith,Here's an image showing how regions like Monument Valley form: This is from Geologic Framework of Arizona, page 30.--Percy

You're too kind. To me it seems more like fantasy. Sediment, not rock, gets deposited, and before sediments can become rock they must first be deeply buried and compacted. Then before they can be eroded they must become exposed at the surface again. Long time periods are required.--Percy

But you believe this because of faith, not evidence. Whenever confronted with evidence that directly contradicts your Bible-based theories you say that you don't have answers yet but that you know you're right.But the number of things you have no evidence for is legion. You have no answers for burrows, nests and stream beds buried in layers, nor for fossils sorted by degree of difference from modern forms, nor for the amount of accumulated radiometric decay increasing with increasing depth, nor for erosion boundaries between layers, nor for limestone, sandstone and shale that forms by drying, nor for where the water came from or where it went.What you do have is many misconceptions about geology. You believe it's unnatural for layers to be deposited flat, despite that most layers are marine and we can see flat layers being deposited in oceans all around the world today. You believe an absence of major tectonic disturbances over long time periods is unnatural, despite great distance from plate boundaries and evidence of much normal tectonic activity.As long as you believe impossible things to be true and true things to be false your views have no chance of convincing anyone.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Minor clarification.

You're referring to this image: I didn't provide the image to convince you but to make clear the views of modern geology. You didn't seem to understand how geology believes the buttes of Monument Valley formed. You seemed to think geology had no explanation for the origin of buttes, that all it believed was that the buttes were once a little bigger, and then weathering made them a little smaller and created surrounding skirts of scree.But geology understands how the buttes formed much better than that. The buttes were not just a little bigger in the past. Before the region was uplifted and rivers began cutting into the landscape it was all just a flat plain and there were no buttes at all. The tops of the buttes were once the floor of this region that was at least a thousand feet higher than the current valley floor. Crisscrossing rivers created canyons whose sides eroded, thereby gradually widening the canyons until they began joining, eventually leaving only the buttes we see today.We understand you reject the views of modern geology. At this point I think most of us are just trying to help you understand what modern geology actually believes so that you can reject real views instead of misconceptions.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Clarify next to last paragraph.

I was hoping you'd reply to this part of Faith's message: --Percy

Might you share with us the evidence that leads many creationists to think this?--Percy

I've reread your Message 560 several times and see no explanations. I think I have pretty much the same questions as Edge.There is clear evidence of significant erosion of:

• The surface of the Vishnu Schist below the Unkar Group
• The surface of the Nankoweap Formation below the Chuar Group
• The tilted surface of the Grand Canyon supergroup below the Tapeats
• The surface of the Muav Limestone beneath the Temple Butte

Given all this evidence of significant erosion during the deposition of this sedimentary stack of layers, how can you state that "massive erosion didn't occur at any point during their laying down." This is one thing Edge was trying to understand. It's like you're staring at white and calling it black.Here's another excerpt from your message: Given that erosion and the subsequent formation of canyons and later buttes couldn't begin until the region was uplifted (prior to uplift it would have been a region of net deposition), there seems no basis for your skepticism. That's why Edge was asking for an explanation, and I'm wondering, too.--Percy

No, of course I'm not just talking about the Precambrian. I also mentioned the Mauv Limestone and the Temple Butte, which are from the Cambrian and Devonian respectively. The upper contact of the Temple Butte with the overlying Redwall Limestone represents yet another uncomformity, though not as dramatic as its lower contact.Regions will only become areas of net erosion when they are uplifted. Which layers do you expect should display evidence of "massive erosion", and why? Your belief that deeply buried layers can tilt remains yet another of your peculiar views with no evidence and that appear to be physically impossible.--Percy

Yes, she misuses the terminology, but I was hopeful that another voice might help her reconsider her belief that rock is initially soft until it dries. You communicated your skepticism in an earlier post (asking how a cliff face could support itself if made of soft easily-eroded rock, a question posed to Faith before), but you didn't provide any technical reasons.--Percy

I understand, but this raises a couple questions. The question already asked and that your one sentence message doesn't answer was which layers do you expect should display evidence of "massive erosion", and why?Another question is what evidence suggests to you that the unconformities I listed (unconformities tell us that erosion occurred) were not "massive erosion"? When material has been eroded away and isn't there anymore, how do you tell how much was eroded away?Yet another question is how your flood both deposits and erodes layers at the same time?--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.

If the sediments were "quite hard", then thousands of feet of material couldn't be eroded away in only a year. Remember, Niagara Falls only erodes five feet per year.And if the sediments were so soft that thousands of feet of material could be eroded away in only a year then they would be too soft to remain as canyon walls and would slump into the canyons.And if they were incompletely lithified and soft, then nothing that happened after the force of compaction of the overlying layers was removed could harden them and they would still be soft today. Yes, the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley represent a great deal of erosion, "massive erosion" if you like. We can tell you think this is a problem for modern geology, but you haven't been able to explain why. The same slow erosion we observe taking place today at many places around the world has also been taking place throughout all of geologic time.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo, clarify slightly.

You didn't say it last time, and you didn't say it this time, either. "It" refers to evidence and a line of reasoning, both absent in Message 448 and Message 604. Yes, in the Grand Staircase region we observe that a great deal of material has been eroded away, and we understand that you believe that over long time periods the same amount of erosion should have also occurred in the past, but you haven't explained why you believe this. We agree with you that erosion should have occurred in the past just it does today, but we don't understand why you expect that what happened in this region over the past 50 million years should have happened there before.Around 50 million years ago this region began experiencing significant uplift, between 5000 and 10000 feet, and the river cut down into the landscape as it rose in elevation. What evidence and reasoning convinces you that this same sequence of events had to have occurred in the past?The Colorado plateau is not the only region of the world that has experienced uplift and the downcutting of rivers. It's happened in many other places, here's an image of the Beipan River Canyon in China: You seem to be thinking that just because significant uplift resulting in unusual geologic formations happened once in the Grand Staircase region that it must have happened before, but there's no evidence or reasoning to support this. It *could* could have happened before, there's nothing to rule it out, but there's nothing in nature that demands that it must have happened before, and it seems unlikely that similarly unusual geologic circumstances would arise in the exact same region of the world multiple times. Not impossible, just unlikely.We do know that in the past the region has been sufficiently elevated to experience significant erosion, because we can see the evidence of that erosion at unconformity boundaries between layers. The upper and lower contact boundaries of the Temple Butte are unconformities. Radiometric dating tells us that roughly 150 million years of geologic history are missing between the top of the Muav and the bottom of the Temple Butte. 150 million years is far, far more time than the 50 million years since the Grand Staircase region was uplifted. That's enough time to remove far more material then has been removed from the Grand Staircase region.But how would we know how much material has been removed at an unconformity boundary? Look at this image of the Grand Canyon layers and tell us how many feet of material have been removed at the unconformity boundary between the Muav and the Temple Butte, and at the other unconformity boundary between the Temple Butte and the Redwall Limestone: The question is rhetorical because there is no way to tell, at least not just by looking at the unconformity boundaries. So how is it that you think you know that erosional events on the same scale as what we observe today in the Grand Staircase region didn't happen in the past? We don't "live in a time of active erosion." We live in a time of normal erosion. The products of weathering are sedimentary material that very slowly and very gradually makes its way from higher regions to lower. All sedimentary material seeks the lowest point, ultimately lakes and seas. Rain and rivers carry sediments to lower regions a little bit at a time, though of course occasional events like storms and spring runoff and so forth can cause a great deal of sedimentary material to be transported in a short time. But the important point is that sedimentary material is just passing slowly through most land regions, ultimately ending up in lakes and seas.The Colorado Plateau is a region of net erosion that has experienced a great deal of uplift. A river flowed through the region while it was being uplifted, and that river cut deeply down into the landscape. This is what always happens under circumstances like these. Rivers always cut down through uplifting landscapes. There is nothing special about the current era. The layers of the Grand Canyon supergroup were deposited in the same way that we observe layers being deposited today. They contain no evidence that they were deposited by a flood. They had to have tilted and then eroded before the Tapeats was deposited upon them. Your idea that deeply buried layers can rotate and that thousands of cubic miles of rock can just disappear is physically impossible.I've covered a lot of ground, so let me summarize the relevant questions:

• What evidence and reasoning is telling you that there should have been more erosion in the past than is recorded in the sedimentary layers?
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• Where the sedimentary layers do record periods of erosion at unconformity boundaries, what evidence and reasoning is telling you how much material has been removed?

--PercyEdited by Percy, : Clarify.Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

Your "reasoning" requires you to postulate impossible things.Such as floods that transport and deposit burrows, nests and stream beds into sedimentary layers, that sort fossils into layers by degree of difference from modern forms, that sort radiometric material by amount of accumulated radiometric decay products with increasing depth, and that somehow deposit erosion boundaries between some layers.And such as limestone, sandstone and shale layers that are partially lithified and so exceptionally soft that thousands of cubic miles can erode away in less than a year and then somehow become rock even though the compaction pressure is absent.And such as buried layers that rotate with much of their cubic miles of material simply disappearing.Until you can postulate scenarios that reality doesn't contradict you can make no claim of calling anything into question, except your own knowledge and reasoning ability.--Percy