Evidence that the Great Unconformity did not Form Before the Strata above it

Your judgments and rulings are getting positively ridiculous. I'm sick of your professed inability to understand my simple descriptions. If you can't understand what that paragraph says, I'm off this thread. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Hi Faith,You are the one who is always complaining that no one understands what you mean, and sometimes even that they're purposefully misunderstanding you. To combat this problem so that threads I moderate no longer spend any time entertaining these kinds of complaints from you I intend to seek clarification immediately. Please respond to requests to make clear what you mean or stop posting.Feel free to recruit assistance from others. If someone understands what you're saying and can provide clarification, then that will be fine. Or if I have mistaken your meaning and there was actually no nonsense and someone can correct my error, then that will also be fine.But we will no longer be leaving uninterpretable statements from you just hanging ambiguously out there.

Hi Faith,It occurred to me later that you misunderstood what Edge said. When I reinterpret your post in light of what you thought Edge said then it makes sense.But Edge was saying something different. The layers he was talking about are deeply buried and are only visible in the canyon walls far below the canyon rim. Deeply buried layers cannot be eroded.So please take another stab at responding to Edge's point. It might be a good idea to wait for Edge to reply to my Message 1887 to make sure my interpretation of what he was saying is correct.

Actually, for once, I understand what you are saying AND what Faith is saying (though the latter still takes some interpretation). I am sorry that my jargon is kind of difficult to understand, but I must add that I have had some pain lately and kind of rush things once in a while.But yes, your understanding is correct. Using fossils and mapping techniques, we can trace a specific age and 'tectonostratigraphic unit' virtually across continents. In this case the Pennsylvanian aged rocks can be traced to the Ancestral Rockies from which they were eroded. This can be done from surface exposure and from subsurface data (drilling).What Faith is saying is essentially, that this cannot be done.I, obviously disagree. Here is an outline of the Paradox Basin in between the Grand Canyon on the lower left and the Uncompahgre Uplift in the upper right. Here is a cross section of the Pennsylvanian rocks, although in reversed direction. In other words the NE end of the section is to the left side. It shows a changing depositional envvironment from the Supai Formation on the right in the GC area to the Cutler Formation alluvial fans and the uplifted granite in the east (left side). I think one can see the source of the alluvial fans (conglomerates) being shed from the uplifting granite highlands.The point is that this all makes sense from the fossil data to the reconstruction of the Pardox evaporitic basin. Notice how thick the rocks are on the left side of the diagram showing the amount of sediments being deposited in that area due to its proximity to the source. I trust that the fault which uplifts the granite is easily seen and understood.Feel free to ask questions.Edited by edge, : No reason given.

I don't think she said this. I don't see any problem with saying that a lower level became exposed when the layers above it were eroded away. I have no idea if the 'science' offered here is correct, but I don't see a grammar problem.Similarly, I am not quite sure whether it makes geological sense to say this happened to the layers 'above the Kaibab in the Grand Canyon area', but if the thread has changed from offering evidence to make stuff up and asking others to disprove it, then surely it should be okay to offer this explanation.If we're going to have a discussion about Flood geology it is certainly going to include some nonsense. But some of that is just bad science that those with geology training might be able to sort out.

I am not going to have time to participate much right now (summer was supposed to slow down somewhat for me but it hasn't worked out that way) but it seems to me Faith's hypothesis all goes back to the original topic of this thread which is that the Great Unconformity is not an erosional feature; that it formed during the flood's deposition of the strata - even AFTER most of it was in place.IMO, the only way this thread could possibly move forward is for her to provide a detailed description/model for how that could possibly be the case. That would require some diagrams that detail the steps involved and where material would be displaced to. This is the type of thing she should be encouraged to provide if there be any hope of this thread moving forward... otherwise, it may as well go into summation and simply wait for a year or so until she brings it up again as if none of this thread ever happened.So, is her argument nonsense? Sure, I think it is total nonsense. I think it was made crystal clear in the last 1800+ posts that the Great Unconformity IS an erosional surface. However, she holds that it has not been adequately demonstrated and that her hypothesis better explains the observations. So the next step is obviously for her to provide an unambiguous description of the hypothesis (that is, how the Great Unconformity formed while under a mile of sediment), otherwise we keep guessing and she keeps complaining that we are all crazy (like thinking that sediment can deposit on a slope was madness). Yea, that is exactly how we get dragged into so many rabbit holes. I realize that she will say that she HAS provided that description many times over in this thread, but if so, perhaps it could be pointed out? The "descriptions" I have seen are vague and unclear and need to be explained better and some of the details worked out.HBD

Frankly, I would be happy if Faith just agreed to disagree and say simply that, "I don't think you can trace the Supai Formation into the conglomerate fans of the Cutler."However, the problem is not just weird explanations of faults that have no evidence and cannot mechanically exist, but then there's the odd arguments that are totally unnecessary, brought up (apparently) simply to be disagreeable.In her defense, it appears that she is trending in the direction of admitting that she has no evidence and simply disagrees based on a biblical interpretation (and not science).I think this way it is possible to have a discussion. The previous mode prevented discussion.But then, I could be wrong...

Unbelievable. I'm leaving this thread. Have fun with your ridiculous trash talk against me.

Hi Faith,I've carefully reviewed the feedback from Edge, HereBeDragons and NoNukes and feel I have a good understanding of what Edge said and what you meant when you replied. I thought Edge's original statement in Message 1886 was a little difficult to understand, so I made a few minor clarifications in my Message 1887 and asked Edge for his reaction. Edge responded in Message 1894 that "yes, your understanding is correct," so here is Edge's text with my clarifications: Edge also provided this helpful diagram, but please keep in mind it is reversed, i.e., northeast is on the left and southwest is on the right: The text is a little hard to read, but you want to focus on the left hand portion where the text "Cutler fans" appears written vertically. Edge explained that the jagged right side of the "Cutler fans" part of the diagram represents alluvial fans that consist of material eroded from basement rocks that had been tectonically uplifted, and he was asking how you imagined the flood doing this.Edited by Admin, : Minor clarification in final para.

After ALL of it was in place. Yes, I'm certainly not giving up on my hypothesis yet. You've forced me to concede that some things are POSSIBLE that nevertheless could not possibly have happened, according to my hypothesis, such as the apparent scouring of such a flat surface as in those original pictures of the GU I posted, by normal surface erosion. Somebody finally found a very flat straight surface so I have to say it's possible for such a surface to be formed by erosion over some distance -- though not nearly the huge distances of most of the strata. But I don't believe for half a second that that explains the GU at those locations where it IS flat and straight -- and there are plenty of other locations where it isn't too, such as at that road cut in New York.I'm with the creationists in general on this point too, such as the British group of which Paul Garner is a part, the one who did the video lecture on the Grand Canyon that I posted. In that video he claims that the GU lacks necessary evidence of surface erosion and proposes the action of a debris flow as the cause of the eroded surface.You did make a good case from the diagrams of the draped Tapeats sandstone, with the help of the video Percy posted of the draped layering of sand deposited in a tank on an irregular surface, that the sand could have been deposited on top of the "monadnocks" rather than the monadnocks intruding into the already-existent layer of sand, but that's really the only good case. The extremely flat surfaces, especially the flat undersurface of the Tapeats that can be seen in some photos, especially where it juts out as a shelf over the underlying basement rock, is evidence for my view. "Crystal clear" is hardly the case. Ambiguous at best. I don't think the proof is there yet, just that you haven't proved your case either. Again I look at the road cut and see a layer that was deformed in the damp state where you all insist it was deposited that way. It's been proved possible for a layer to deposit evenly on a slope but as I see it (according to my hypothesis) there is simply no way that's how that layer formed or any of the layers of the geologic column. I think that's obvious just by looking at it, and that I've described well enough how it's obvious -- the appearance of the sagged layer, the fact that layers above also were slightly tilted downward to the left above it, the narrowing of the layers to the right and the rough rock where the droop to the left apparently originated, which may in fact be the result of the upward thrust of the gneiss to the right; but beyond that I can't prove it. That I've described many times and described it at my blog as well. There should be no doubt about my hypothesis in this case. I still think you're all mad to think strata could have formed that way. I think the dismissal of the formerly trusted Steno's principle of original horizontality (gollygee, science PROGRESSES ya know) is just too too convenient and basically a fraud. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I don't have any reason to doubt the ability to trace a LAYER (not a time period) and don't know why you think I would. I've many times said that I understand the strata to extend across whole continents.I can't of course accept your timeline for any particular formation such as this one. According to my hypothesis the Rockies formed after the Flood as part of the tectonic upheavals occurring at that time. Their formation would have interrupted the strata that had already been laid down, of course. You may certainly be able to show that they are the same kind of rock in different forms, but the idea that the layer eroded from the mountain rock is pure conjecture. How about the possibility that the Pennsylvanian deposits were lithified when the mountains were uplifted? That what can't be done? Unfortunately that diagram is totally invisible to me. I put it in Paint and expanded it so I now can at least see the blue patch in the center and basic outlines but can't make out the words. I wouldn't doubt that there is some relation between the uplifting of the mountains and the rocks at their base but of course I have to put the timing off to the end of the Flood, the mountainbuilding disrupting the already-deposited strata, not during the laying down of one of the buried layers. So in my hypothesis it would be the mountain-building itself that caused the rubble or conglomerate fans, also lithified or even metamorphosed the sedimentary rock where the tectonic pressure occurredBut I also have to say that cross section is hard to decipher. For one thing a vertical stack of alluvial fans is hard to grasp. No problem with the extension of the Supai group into this formation, only problems with the timing of the events. Again I don't have a problem with the idea that the erosion of the mountains could have created the conglomerate fans or rubble, only with the timing, so that the raising of the mountains itself could have created the rubble. That tectonic action would have compressed the strata it was pushing upward, and erosion of chunks off its rising surface would make sense.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 have no reason to think that though. No idea what you are referring to, some completely mistaken misreading of your own perhaps. Nothing biblical at all about my hypothesis. As usual the Biblical framework defines what is possible but the interpretation of the rocks doesn't come from the Bible. And really nothing has changed anyway. I like to use assertive language when I believe something is true but all I can possibly have is an hypothesis and since it helps with communication I think it's best to stick to that concept.

What I said was that *I* think it was crystal clear. Obviously you do not. I acknowledged that you don't find it convincing. Proof is not really an issue, what is at issue is convincing, logical and realistic arguments. I (and I assume others as well) find the idea that 'ALL the layers were deposited and then *somehow* the strata was deformed in such a way as to produce a contact that has the characteristics of an erosional surface' very, very hard to swallow. That it was once an erosional surface seems (at least to me) to be the simplest and most obvious explanation. Your explanation for how it formed seems silly and nonsensical (at least to me). I don't think asking us to go to your blog is appropriate. But yes, you have described your hypothesis before. What is missing is the details. I guarantee if I tried to draw a diagram as to how your hypothesis describes the formation of the GU, you would just accuse me of misrepresenting your argument. This is where you need to step up. Rather than vague statements regarding how you "think" it might have happened, give us specifics, details and illustrations. Those would be good details to further explore. What evidence of surface erosion is missing? "Looks flat" is a lousy argument (especially when it is not flat). What evidence of a massive debris flow IS there and how does that explain the GU? I don't see how debris flow can explain the tilting of the Supergroup or how it occurred after all the strata was in place, but hey, give it a go. But we haven't dismissed the principle of original horizontality, we have just acknowledged that there are conditions where layers are not deposited horizontally. Plus if you look at the internal structures of layers you will see there is very little actually horizontal. As petophysics pointed out all deposits are on a slope. However, the principle of original horizontality is still a useful principle, but only at a macro level. When you look closer, it is not so useful.Besides, you yourself just acknowledged that sediment can drape over existing structures and can deposit evenly along a slope so why are we mad for thinking that it can happen?HBD

You've been corrected about this many times now, including just a few messages ago. No one ever insisted it was deposited on a slope. As has been explained, there are multiple ways the layers could have taken on their current orientation, and there is no way tell from the images which it was. You're declaring that you will ignore the results of the experiments demonstrating that sediments can indeed deposit upon a sloped surface, and I've already ruled that you can't do that in this thread. If nothing else the experiments should tell you that your intuition about geologic processes in general is leading you seriously astray, but if you'd like to discuss sedimentation upon a slope further then please propose a new thread. For this thread you will have to accept the possibility that the "layers above" are "slightly tilted downward to the left" because of sedimentation upon a slope. You've never described it in a way that made any sense to anyone. Please try again. Your own experiment proved sedimentation on a slope possible. You have to stop arguing this point.