I have been too busy to read this thread until this morning and it took a while, but I wanted to comment on a couple things from yesterday.
Faith writes:
Jar keeps saying I don't have a model. The fact is I do, and that's all I'm required to answer at this point.
You don't have a valid model, one that works. As soon as we start nitpicking, the objections to your model build up.
Faith writes:
But when you say it has to be tested against reality, I will for the umpteen jillionth time say that what you regard as reality is really just OE/evolutionist interpretation of reality, not reality itself.
Well, interestingly, we go out and study rocks as they are today (reality) and we observe and note their appearance and composition and the ordering of the layers at different points around the globe. We can observe fossils and
their ordering in the layers around the globe. Making those observations requires no knowledge about the age of the earth or dating. Observing the occurrence of fossils around the globe requires no knowledge of evolutionary biology.
We can predict that the layers would look a certain way if there was a 1 year long global flood. We can predict how the fossils would be deposited in a global flood. The Earth has a flood that covers approximately 85% of the surface right now. We can watch what happens in floods of high velocity, high volume water all the way to quiet steady rise in depth.
Being a global flood does not mean that WE cannot construct a model that accurately describes what kind of evidence it would leave.
Your model does not fit the reality of our observations. Saying this is like no other flood is just empty bluster.
Faith writes:
I say the strata and their fossil contents are excellent evidence for a worldwide Flood and they are, just on the face of it they are, and the idea that a miles-deep stack of straight flat slabs of rock of different kinds of sediments could possibly represent the surface of this earth at different time periods is nutty, Coyote, just nutty.
Your model cannot explain why there are multiple layers, or why we can see obvious erosional features in the surfaces of layers that are overlain by marine layers. Your model cannot explain why we see marine layers that are under aeolian layers, that are under more marine layers.
Faith writes:
The only way anyone could hold onto that idea is by just not thinking about it, keeping their focus on the details and missing the big picture.
The whole picture, fine details, and global scale are explained by the science of Geology. That's the interesting thing, Faith, Geology has a model that explains everything, every single solitary observation fits into the theory. All those pesky details that you cannot explain, well we can. There are whole libraries of explanations and none of those explanations support your model. Your model is made up of only two things, water and dirt, the rest is holes where nothing fits.
Faith writes:
Why should there be time periods at all, let alone time periods marked by a particular kind of sediment with a particular kind of fossil contents? That alone makes no sense.
Well, of course, that alone makes no sense, but it is not alone. We have a planet and libraries full of observations about it, and when we take account of vast stretches of time,
it ALL makes perfect sense. It all fits together perfectly. There is no place on Earth that you can point to that contradicts the science of Geology.
Faith writes:
You are NOT going to get anything like that out of the era WE live in. Look at the current surface of the earth. It is NOT going to flatten down to a slab of some particular kind of sediment that spans the world EVER.
The processes that formed the layers we see in the Grand Canyon and around the planet are still going on. The places above sea level (land) are eroding and the resulting sediment is being deposited in the oceans around the land. Deposits of dead organisms are accumulating in marine environments and all this will continue in the future.
Once again, erosion and deposition over vast amounts of time explains exactly what we see and your model does not.
Faith writes:
And no other "time period" ever did so either. The idea is nutty nutty nutty.
What is really nutty, is insisting on a model loosely based on a myth, while denying that the single, simple fact of geological processes acting over vast amounts of time explains
EVERYTHING we see, without a single piece of contradictory evidence.
Faith writes:
Just because years of piling on assumption after assumption after interpretation after interpretation seems to "prove" YOUR model by sheer accumulation of same doesn't make it so.
All the evidence from all the natural sciences leads to the single inevitable conclusion that the Earth is very old and taking that factor into account makes everything fit together perfectly.
What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python
One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie
If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy