"The Flood" deposits as a sea transgressive/regressive sequence ("Walther's Law")

It would be a great help to Faith if someone could provide valid arguments for her views. Faith believes that a flood incursion onto land would deposit sedimentary layers identical to those deposited by a gradually transgressing or regressing shoreline following Walther's Law, indeed, that a flood incursion *is* a demonstration of Walther's Law.

My own understanding of Walther's Law is that it plays out over a great deal of time, and that flood deposits are distinctively different from normal shoreline-related deposits. That's not to say that floods don't occur while shoreline-related sedimentary deposits are forming, they of course do, but if big enough to leave a sedimentary record they are recognizable as flood deposits.

--Percy

Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Changed original topic title from ""The Flood" and Walther's Law" to "The Flood" deposits as a sea transgressive/regressive sequence ("Walther's Law")

I'm just going to describe my own view of Walther's Law, please correct as necessary.

I don't see how Walther's Law could apply to a flood deposit, not even in a "superficial and simplified way." Walther's Law states that vertical successions of strata result from lateral changes in environment, such as a coastline that is moving inland or outland. Floods don't cause lateral changes in environment. The water level change is temporary, so any flood deposits are not part of Walther's law.

A flood that, for example as a result of a severe storm, erodes away a large chunk of coastline is not an example of Walther's Law. It is an example of severe weather causing extremely fast erosion, and it should be easily recognizable in the geological record because of the types of sediments and because of the absence of the kind of strata resulting from Walther's Law.

Faith doesn't really understand Walther's Law, and since she denies the long time periods Walther's Law requires she can't really invoke it. It's effects occur not over days or years but over centuries and millennia. Faith thinks that Walther's Law is what happens when her Flood moves across a landscape and magically deposits miles of layers of different strata.

--Percy

Well, what a surprise, you've abandoned the Evidence of the flood thread and ignored a plethora of rebuttals so that you can come over to this thread and repeat the same arguments as if they hadn't already been rebutted.

This is Biblical. There is no scientific evidence for it.

Floods do not cause "severe erosion of the land" unless there is a concentrated flow of water. Look at all the flooding from the recent hurricanes. Erosion is minor and scattered. One example of potential erosion is the Guajataca Dam in Puerto Rico. If it does burst then there will likely be severe erosion downstream from the dam, but right now there is no erosion, despite the many inches of water that fell.

The strata we find reflect a succession of significantly different sedimentation environments (including land, coastline and marine), different fossils, and different radiometric dates. The strata definitely do not contain significant amounts of flood runoff from land and show no evidence of a global Flood.

Most strata are composed of fine sediments that takes centuries and millennia to fall out of suspension to depths of miles, including the calcareous ooze.

You can't apply Walther's Law if you deny long time frames. Long time frames are inherent in it's definition.

And this evidence of when volcanic activity began is what? The radiometric evidence we have of volcanic activity says that it has been ongoing since our planet's beginning.

Uh-huh. You know, every spring in snow country the significant water flows don't occur up the mountains where there are just a lot of small streamlets. The significant water flows occur down in the valleys where all the runoff from mountains gathers into streams and then rivers that overflow their banks and cause floods. Your one-time Flood would cause very, very, very little mountain erosion and a great deal of erosion at lower elevations. It would be such a great amount of erosion that we couldn't fail to see it today as the results of the runoff of a great Flood. Yet this evidence for your "scenario" is completely missing.

You're not thinking this through. Flowing water causes erosion, standing water does not. Rain has been falling on my lawn for years, certainly more than 40 days and 40 nights worth since I've lived here, and the lawn hasn't eroded a single inch.

Your "erosion" scenario requires flowing water, but water could not be flowing on all land. Most of the water would be standing, like it stands today in lakes and seas, and causing very, very little erosion when measured in days. Erosion occurs mostly at the borders of rivers, likes and seas, and it doesn't take days, it takes centuries and millennia.

--Percy

The Fall and Flood are Biblical and have no scientific standing, especially in a science thread.

There is no evidence of any sudden and tremendous rearrangement of the Earth's geology.

You're back to the Bible again. There is no scientific evidence for an "original Created Earth." The evidence we have today is that slow and steady geologic processes have been ongoing for billions of years and are responsible for the appearance of the planet now with all it's strata and fossils and evidence of age.

Fiction is more like it. The Earth does not have a tumble-down appearance, and there is no evidence of a formerly more orderly appearance.

Since science does not see the Earth as "disorderly," this is not part of the evidence for great age. The evidence is the great age of the strata which reflect slow and steady deposition over eons, the changing lifeforms they contain, and radiometric dating.

You are again referencing the Bible. There is no evidence of a "Creation" such as related in the Bible, and the evidence says that "deserts and high mountains and frozen wastelands" have existed for at least billions of years.

This is again Biblical, and there is no scientific evidence for either the Fall or the Flood.

There is no evidence that the Earth was ever lush everywhere. A multiplicity of environments have always existed, both marine and on land.

This is again Biblical and unsupported by any evidence whatsoever.

If you're trying to portray your position as having a scientific basis, you're failing miserably. Moose was asking about what an intelligent design of the planet would look like, and your answer contained no science at all, just Bible-based stories, and a lot more that is just speculation.

--Percy

Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

Well, that's a lie. The only reason you're in this thread is because you had to abandon the Evidence of the flood thread because you couldn't muster any evidence or successful arguments for your positions, or even make sense most of the time. In that thread you ignored messages and rebuttals, and issued a great many content-free one-line and one-sentence responses, often resorting to all caps, and picked fights with other participants as a way of creating excuses to ignore them. And let's not forget the ever present excuse that if anything is too white or too long or too technical then you will ignore it. This thread will be no different.

In the Evidence of the flood thread you ignored all the rebuttals to your impossible and ridiculous ideas of how angular unconformities form. Your "argument" does not hold together and certainly provides no support for any of your other ideas.

You haven't even defined "Kind", let alone made a successful argument involving it.

Showing evidence has been your aim? Since when? You haven't presented any evidence. What you think is evidence is writing solely "strata and fossils," as if they provided you any support.

Successfully making the case is not something you get decide within your own mind. It's something that is proven over time as more and more people are persuaded to your point of view. So far in 16 years of participation you have convinced no one. So no, you have not made "the case," and if you think you have then you are delusional.

There not only is evidence on the other side, *all* the evidence is on the other side. All you have is Bible stories.

--Percy

Well, the lying continues, I see. If none of your arguments have been refuted, how come there's a thread full of rebuttals over at Evidence of the flood that you haven't answered?

This is an opinion shared by only a single person, you.

--Percy

I see you're back to all caps again. What a surprise.

You do not actually see "one major tectonic upheaval." The geological record contains an incredible number of tectonic events all around the world. And the evidence does not point to your conclusions. When it is explained why that is you run away.

You answer the contrary evidence? Where? Certainly not over at the Evidence of the flood thread, or any of a host of other threads where you've thrown tantrums and abandoned discussions.

This is not an issue of paradigm. It is an issue of you trying to shoehorn your Biblical interpretation of the Flood into a scientific context. Your ideas violate both natural physical laws and common sense, and when this is described in detail for you you employ a number of strategies to, as you say, "DUCK IT."

--Percy

Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

How can say this when you've left behind you a trail of abandoned threads full of unanswered questions and unaddressed rebuttals? When you so often admit you have no answers now, or that evidence is an illusion? When most of what you say isn't answers but mere claims to have made answers, as if your every answer hasn't been rebutted multiple times and responded to usually zero times.

--Percy

Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

Wow, only on page 2 of the thread and you're already in one-liner mode. Way to go "making your case" and answering questions for "the umpteenth time."

Calling the evidence of the fossil record an "illusion" is not an answer or a rebuttal or even an argument that belongs in this thread. Deal with the evidence in a straightforward and forthright fashion by explaining how it supports the mythical Flood being responsible for all the geology we see today.

--Percy

Now you're confusing the fact of evolution with the theory. That the fossil record reflected change over time was a fact that was noticed well before Darwin, and not just by his Grandfather. Charles Darwin's achievement was in explaining why change over time happens.

No, you don't "know there was a worldwide Flood some 4500 years ago." You haven't an ounce of evidence to support that idea. What you have, as you admit later, is "God's Word."

No, you have things backwards again. Thinking on evolution does not begin with the "Conclusions of Evolutions". It begins with the theory that is supported by the evidence. Conclusions are the end point based upon facts, such as fossils or DNA evidence.

This, too, is backwards. Geology begins with the facts that support geological theories, such as the strata and the fossils and radiometric dating, and basic ideas like that the present is the key to the past and the Law of Superposition. Geology does not begin with conclusions.

Yes, you should listen to yourself, especially since in the absence of all evidence you think still think something happened just because it appears in your religious book. Belief interferes with learning, which explains why you have learned so little. I don't mean that you've learned little in the sense that you've become very little convinced by our arguments. I mean that even after all this time you have still failed to learn many of the basic facts of evolution and geology, and more generally just of science itself. This is, of course, a conscious choice you make by failing to read and understand so much of what is written to you.

Sure there is. Creationists begin with preformed conclusions and seek confirming evidence. Scientists seek evidence and follow it to whatever conclusions it leads.

This website is creationists' opportunity to prove their contention that creation science is true science, not religion. You lose the debate outright when you declare that what you know about science comes from God. Plus you give the lie to your claim that there is "nothing at all different about how creationists think." You are quite obviously beginning with a conclusion, namely whatever message you think is contained in God's Word.

--Percy

But I didn't attack you personally. Everything I said was factually true. This is just one of the many excuses you give for not responding to posts. It's an example in miniature for why you abandoned the Evidence of the flood thread.

My post was about the kind of evidence floods really leave behind, and what strata really look like that isn't like a flood, how you're wrong about Walther's Law, how you're wrong about volcanic activity, how you're wrong about what floods and flowing water (two different though not mutually exclusive things) do to the landscape.

I did also respond to all your lies and misrepresentations, which shouldn't be allowed to stand unchallanged. Let's list them, shall we:

• You claimed to have "shown a great deal of evidence for the Young Earth." The actual fact is that you haven't presented an iota of evidence. You merely repeat your bald claims over and over, including that you've already addressed issues that you haven't.

• You haven't defined "Kind", let alone made any successful arguments for it.

• You claimed you made your case, despite that that isn't something you get to decide, and despite not convincing a single person in all your years here.

• You claimed none of your arguments have been refuted, despite the many rebuttals across many threads to which you haven't responded.

• You claimed the issue was one of paradigm when it is obviously one of religion, as is obvious from the many times you reference God and Bible.

• You claimed you "don't dismiss or ignore evidence," despite that that is almost exclusively what you do. You're already doing it in this thread, e.g., your Message 27:

  Faith in Message 27 writes: I disagree, sorry.

  What a brilliant examination of the evidence!

You have for the most part abandoned discussion at EvC Forum. You just move from one thread to the next repeating the same arguments and ignoring the rebuttals. Again, not a personal attack, just the facts.

--Percy

Ignoring your evidence is analogous to ignoring invisible, ethereal pink elephants. This was your opportunity to describe or at least reference the evidence you think is being ignored, but you say nothing. So what is that evidence, anyway. Let me guess. Strata and fossils?

Since arguing in any scientific sense requires evidence and adhering to known physical laws, you're the one with the least clue of what you've been "arguing all these years."

There is no evidence for your side. Every time you claim evidence it gets rebutted. You ignore the rebuttal and then that's the last we hear of it until in the next thread where you again claim the same evidence, which gets rebutted again. And you again ignore the rebuttal. No personal attack, just fact. Prove me wrong - go back to the Evidence of the flood thread and start replying to all the rebuttals you ignored.

About the "conclusive in my opinion" part, whether something is conclusive isn't something you just decide in your own mind. "Conclusive" is a quality that evidence and argument take on only after they've convinced a great many people (and then there's still tentativity). So far you've convinced a group of one - yourself. This is probably a good time to throw in a mention of that old canard that the easiest person to fool is yourself.

Actually, whose interpretation of the evidence will have to be adjusted is what discussion is supposed to decide. But discussion is what you're doing your very best to avoid.

--Percy

Well, then, why don't you explain to us how the sheer magnitude of the Flood:

• Sorts material into different strata.

• Sorts strata out of order regarding density.

• Sorts fossils out of order regarding fossil size/density.

• Sorts fossils by order of increasing difference from modern forms with increasing depth.

• Sorts strata by increasing radiometric age with increasing depth.

• Maintains tracks and burrows.

• Creates unconformities.

• Creates angular unconformities (don't forget to include where all the missing material went)

--Percy

Wow, you really don't understand Walther's Law. Walther's Law is (put most simply) about transgressing and regressing seas. A transgressing sea is when the seacoast moves inland, while a regressing sea is when the seacoast moves outward from the land.

Taking the example of a transgressing sea, the seacoast slowly and gradually moves inland. It could be because the sea is rising, or because the land is subsiding, it doesn't matter which. The key point is that the seacoast gradually moves inland, perhaps at the rate of a foot per year. This seacoast represents an environment. There's the actual boundary area between sea and land, which is sandy and where sediments that become sandstone are deposited. Further offshore is where the mud and clay that becomes slate and shale are deposited. Further offshore than that is where sediments that become limestone are deposited.

As the seacoast moves inland the regions where sandstone, shale, slate and limestone are deposited moves inland with it. This is how, say, an extensive layer of sand is deposited, not by sand being deposited all across a huge region of water, but by sand being deposited all up and down a coastline that gradually moves inland. As the coastline moves inland, the area where sand is being deposited moves inland with it.

In other words, the sand is deposited along the narrow strip of coastline, but as the coastline moves inland the strip where sand is deposited moves inland with it. Gradually the region where sand has been deposited becomes more and more extensive. Naturally the regions more out to sea where slate and shale and limestone are deposited moves in the same inland direction as the coastline, gradually broadening them in extent also. It should also make sense now why these deposits are not level, since they follow the contour of the land that gradually increases in height.

The formation of the sediments that comprise sandstone, slate, shale and limestone take a considerable time to form. They're made up primarily of the remains of life and runoff from land. Take sand, for example. Sand is the result of water action at the coastline where finer materials are carried out to sea before sinking (the water is more active near the coast), while the heavier particles are ground and smoothed in the surf and fall out of suspension at or near the coast - sand. It takes a long time for sand to form. It is not a renewable resource on human timescales.

Water moving quickly across a landscape, as in your Flood scenario, would not have time to create sand. Or slate or shale or limestone. There is simply insufficient time for them to form.

But we know that the same geologic processes we observe around the world today have been taking place for millennia. We can observe these processes in real time and understand how they work. And the same sedimentary layers being produced by these processes today were produced the same way in the past. We know this because we can compare them. In a lot of ways it's like the forensics program you liked, where they deciphered what happened in the past by examining the evidence left behind.

You don't have any evidence of a world-wide Flood 4500 years ago.

We know the Flood didn't occur because of the complete absence of evidence for it, and because of all the evidence of slow geologic processes taking place for millions and billions of years.

You not only don't know what degree of turbulence was involved in the flood, you don't know anything about it at all that derives from real world evidence.

Explaining observed geology in terms of a world-wide Flood failed over a couple hundred years ago. In the intervening interval no evidence has come to light supporting the Flood.

It's a nice story consistent with the Bible until you get into the evidence. Explain to us again how the Flood did the things I listed in Message 65?

Your ignorance is showing again. "Ocean basins" is what we call the entire sea bottom of the oceans.

Ocean and sea basins are mostly "huge flat horizontal expanses".

No, this is incorrect. The sediments are carried down off the land and into the sea. They aren't moved "up-gradient".

Given that you haven't identified any evidence so far, what leads you to believe any evidence is hiding out there?

You've never introduced any evidence that wasn't rebutted, then you ignore the rebuttals, then you simply repeat the claim that you've presented the evidence, and you repeat this empty claim over and over again. Who do you think you're fooling?

What kind of crazy logic are you following anyway? Does it really make sense to you that the person with the least knowledge of geology, the person who ignores the most evidence, the person who avoids the most discussion, the person who is the least stable and who throws the most temper tantrums, the person who can't even convince a single one of her own Bible believers, is the person who has somehow arrived at the right answer? Do you really believe that knowledge suddenly forms out of ignorance?

--Percy

Edited by Percy, : Clarification.

There were no such discussions. You are making things up. There is no evidence of a human genetic bottleneck 4500 years ago. The number alleles of many genes renders that mathematically impossible.

--Percy