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Author Topic:   Motley Flood Thread (formerly Historical Science Mystification of Public)
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


(3)
Message 6 of 877 (833835)
05-27-2018 10:53 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Faith
05-27-2018 2:39 AM


Faith writes:
Kind of as a reaction to jar's thread demanding that believers in the worldwide Flood be able to explain every single geological event that ever happened on the planet or else trash the whole Flood idea,...
You mean the An attempt to let Flood supporters explain how things were created thread? The one you abandoned after two messages:
Faith in Jar's thread writes:
Changed my mind. I don't want to participate on this thread.
The one that asked how the Flood explained a few interesting geological structures:
So having no answers you instead open this thread so you can ask the same questions that have been answered in other threads, answers that you ignored or misunderstood. Questions like this one have been answered many times:
I would like to talk about what evidence geologists have for their Geological Time Scale landscapes which are based on a stack of rocks with dead things in them that are best explained by the Flood.
Why do you think the geological strata and fossils are best explained by the Flood? Just so you have something to focus on, here is a list of questions still unanswered:
  1. In stratigraphic columns, why does radiometric age increase with increasing depth?
  2. Why does radiometric age also change laterally across a strata?
  3. Why are radiometric isotopes older than 80 million years completely missing, something that could only happen if they'd had at least 4 billions years to decay?
  4. What causes magnetic sea floor striping, and why is it consistent with radiometric ages?
  5. In stratigraphic columns, why do fossils appear increasingly different from modern forms with increasing depth?
  6. In stratigraphic columns, with increasing depth why are there first no mammals, then no dinosaurs, then no reptiles, then no amphibians, then no fish, then no multicellular life?
  7. Why do you think the Grand Staircase region's geology to be representative of all geology worldwide?
  8. If the Paleozoic layers were already present when the Supergroup layers tilted, why do the faults associated with the Supergroup extend down into the Vishnu Schist but not up into the Paleozoic layers?
  9. If the Supergroup layers actually tilted, where did all the missing cubic miles of rock go?
  10. If the Grand Canyon had been cut suddenly then the canyon walls would be vertical. How do you explain the sloping walls of the Grand Canyon?
  11. Why is the rate of slope retreat at the Grand Canyon consistent with an age of millions of years?
  12. What is your evidence that all tectonic activity worldwide occurred after deposition of sediments?
  13. Given the randomness of floods, why has no fossil ever been found in the wrong strata evolutionarily?
  14. How did the flood leave behind cross bedded sand dunes with animal tracks in the Coconino?
  15. How did the flood transport and deposit sediments that include burrows, termite nests, worm holes, etc.?
  16. What is the definition of kind?
  17. How can you argue about kind without a definition?
  18. Why, if you believe the Bible is God's inerrant word, do you think there are exceptions to God's claim to have "destroyed all living creatures" in Genesis 8:21?
  19. How did the ocean keep all the sedimentary types separate?
  20. Since floods only sort continuously by size/density of sediment and do not create sharp contacts, what is it about strata that says "flood" to you?
  21. How did the deposition of sediments by a series of waves leave no evidence of that process behind?
  22. If the flood rains washed all the land sediment into the sea, how was life left behind on the denuded landscape to leave tracks when waves deposited new sediments?
  23. Why do you think Bertault's views relevant since his experiments deposited sediments at an angle of 45° and required a flume?
  24. Since 3/4 of the globe is currently covered by water, how is a truly global flood that covers the remaining quarter much different?
  25. Why did no fishermen survive the flood?
  26. How was the original salinity of the ocean restored after the Flood?
  27. If the fountains of the deep were undersea volcanos, where is the evidence that many undersea volcanos erupted 4500 years ago?
And here are a list of things Faith still has doesn't understand or has misconceptions about:
  1. Constructive discussion.
  2. How to anchor views in facts.
  3. Subordinating everything to the Bible is not science.
  4. Math.
  5. Physics.
  6. Walther's Law.
  7. That the strata of the Grand Canyon formed through Walther's Law, except the Coconino.
  8. The claim that no terrestrial landscape is as straight and flat as strata is false.
  9. Strata are not as flat and straight as Faith thinks, even at the Grand Canyon.
  10. Strata are rarely uniform with regard to sediment type.
  11. Life in the past lived and died and sometimes became entombed just as it does today, above, atop and beneath surfaces of terrestrial, marine or lacustrine sediment, not on flat slabs of rock.
  12. Most strata are marine. While terrestrial landscapes can become strata, they usually don't.
  13. Lithified soil is called a paleosol.
  14. Rocks do not form by drying but by diagenesis.
  15. There are no underground rivers and streams eroding buried strata (karst structures are a different matter).
  16. Buried strata cannot tilt without affecting surrounding strata.
  17. Angular unconformities happen when sediment is deposited atop tilted strata, such as at Welcombe Mouth Beach.
  18. Accelerated continental drift with the attendant accelerated creation of sea floor at mid-oceanic ridges would release enough heat to boil the oceans. This is even without taking into account the heat from friction and subduction.
  19. In the oceans, sea floor sediment depth increases with increasing distance from mid-oceanic ridges where the sea floor forms. Sea floor near mid-oceanic ridges is young and has little time to accumulate sediments, while that far from mid-oceanic ridges is much older and has had much time to accumulate sediments.
  20. The sediments comprising strata were always deposited during a particular time period, whether the millions of years of geology or the year of the Flood.
  21. Stratigraphic columns continue to grow today, mostly at low points such as lake and sea bottom.
  22. Fossil abundance varies widely among strata.
  23. Life buried today could eventually become fossils.
  24. Speciation does not take millions of years.
  25. Old evidence is still evidence. Evidence has no expiration date.
  26. Vegetation and trees did not keep buried sediments loose so that the 40 days and nights of rain could wash them into the ocean.
  27. The dog does not have enormous genetic diversity compared to other species today. It can be no more genetically diverse than the gray wolf from which it is descended.
  28. A definition of kind that is different for each kind is not a definition.
Naturally these lists are not exhaustive.
There are plenty of examples of this kind of "science" but here's a typical one from National Geographic:
Popular press magazines are unlikely to include that kind of information. Use Google Scholar. For instance, I was able to turn up the reference The Jurassic Climate which states at the beginning of the section titled Climatic Criteria on page 159:
quote:
By far the best climatic indicators among sedimentary rocks found in the Jurassic are evaporites and coals (Frakes, 1979). Substantial deposits of evaporites (notably gypsum, anhydrite, and halite) indicate conditions of both warmth and aridity, whereas coals indicate swampy conditions in generally humid regimes, though there is no particular temperature connotation.
Just read on, there's plenty of detail, though keep in mind that this reference is 35 years old and much has been learned since then. For example, if you start reading from the top of page 162 you'll note that it equivocates considerably on the humidity-aridity issue, while today the Jurassic is viewed as a more humid period. What you'll gain by reading this relatively short chapter is a bit of an understanding of how the types and prevalence of different deposit types can tell us about climate.
So I'm asking what's the evidence this is based on?
Since you rarely pay much attention to evidence, why shouldn't this request for evidence be viewed askance as just another invitation for people to waste their time?
So at every such assertion I'm going to want to know
HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS?
WHAT IS YOUR EVIDENCE?
Before putting any time into detailed descriptions of how we know what we know, I'd want some assurance that you're going to make an effort to understand and discuss them instead of inventing reasons to ignore them. The lists above are a testament to your efforts at ignoring information and explanations, and this type of behavior has to stop if this thread is to be any different from your past threads. You still don't think contemporary sedimentary deposits are adding to stratigraphic columns, which represents an incredible degree of ignorance, irrational thinking and blocking out of information.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Faith, posted 05-27-2018 2:39 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 7 by edge, posted 05-27-2018 11:20 AM Percy has replied
 Message 10 by Capt Stormfield, posted 05-27-2018 12:48 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied
 Message 30 by Faith, posted 05-27-2018 4:47 PM Percy has replied
 Message 41 by Faith, posted 05-27-2018 11:19 PM Percy has replied
 Message 50 by Faith, posted 05-28-2018 11:58 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


Message 16 of 877 (833858)
05-27-2018 1:52 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by edge
05-27-2018 11:20 AM


edge writes:
Frankly, I have a problem with characterizing the climate of the Jurassic in simplistic terms. After all, this is a fairly large planet with land, oceans, weather and tectonism. We clearly had deserts in what was western North America at the time. Really, there is no need to generalize. After all, why couldn't climates have been similarly variable as they are today?
I considered adding that just like today the Jurassic had deserts and plains and jungles and swamps and forests and mountains and snow and monsoons and so on, but I decided to keep it short on details. If Faith reads that chapter (which she won't) it does a pretty good job of describing how different parts of the planet had different climates, and that climates during the Jurassic were not constant.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 7 by edge, posted 05-27-2018 11:20 AM edge has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


Message 19 of 877 (833867)
05-27-2018 2:38 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by Faith
05-27-2018 12:53 PM


Re: Nope, it's not for the "scientifically literate" and the public deserves more respect
Faith writes:
...this is generally accepted science for scientifically literate people and the background does not need to be regurgitated, because it is understood.
But others on the thread are saying the opposite, that my information is from a popular source where we shouldn't necessarily expect to find scientifically literate readers, so I'm directed to more scholarly sources where the background information is available.
I think many here would characterize National Geographic differently from RAZD. To me it's a general public sort of magazine where few articles require any scientific literacy, and those that are about science are at a very basic level, like the one you cited about the Jurassic. Many articles are about travel, adventure and contemporary foreign cultures. One article last summer was about the historical Jesus. Photos are a big focus. National Geographic is not a science magazine, and certainly not a science journal.
But my objection is that the public is being presented with a flat out assertion on the level of known fact without even a smidgen of tentativity,...
Magazines for the general public contain articles appropriate to their audience.
...factual knowledge that nobody could possibly have about a time millions of years ago.
Why do you think evidence that has survived from millions of years ago doesn't tell us about that time?
The NG writeup is TYPICAL, that's my point.
Not much of a point - they still have to sell magazines. If they get too technical they'll lose their audience. A magazine that was once fairly technical scientifically but that has been dumbed down considerably in recent years, I think in pursuit of increasing their circulation, is Scientific American - very disappointing.
There are LOTS AND LOTS of examples of this flat out assertive way of presenting both Old Earth Geology and the Theory of Evolution, which has been driving me crazy since before I became a Christian or knew anything about creationism.
This confirms what we've suspected for some time now - you never really accepted geology and evolution.
I hope to get to providing some examples of this. I don't buy the explanation that you can't treat the public with the respect of giving some explanation instead of acting like you know it all and they just have to submit.
You make magazines sound like the Gestapo. Magazines print articles that appeal to their audience. That's as it should be and is not going to change.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by Faith, posted 05-27-2018 12:53 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 21 by Faith, posted 05-27-2018 3:51 PM Percy has replied
 Message 23 by Faith, posted 05-27-2018 4:07 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


Message 49 of 877 (833926)
05-28-2018 11:18 AM
Reply to: Message 21 by Faith
05-27-2018 3:51 PM


Re: Nope, it's not for the "scientifically literate" and the public deserves more respect
Faith writes:
You make magazines sound like the Gestapo. Magazines print articles that appeal to their audience. That's as it should be and is not going to change.
Maybe I'm misrepresenting my own concerns here. It is true that I've felt cheated and misled by many articles on evolution and OE geology over the years, articles for the public since I never had an inclination to get deeper into the science questions,...
How many times does this have to be said? Magazines and newspapers for the general public don't provide this kind of detail. Why should they write articles their audience isn't interested in?
This has been explained to you many times over the years - why are you asking this question as if for the first time? Do you really think magazines like National Geographic should destroy their circulation by printing articles that wouldn't interest their current audience? And that you wouldn't understand anyway? Why?
What science magazines are you reading? Some are more scientific than others. These are, in my opinion, the best scientific magazines out there that are targeted toward the general public, ordered from most to least scientific (in my opinion):
  • Science (this is a scientific journal and most people should skip this one - I only include it here because it does contain short non-technical articles about its technical articles. It's expensive, the main articles are very technical, and they frequently require detailed knowledge of the particular field.)
  • American Scientist (maybe 25% of the articles are simple enough to be understood by anyone, another 50% can be understood by anyone willing to look things up as they go along, and the remainder can be very technical and require detailed knowledge of the particular field)
  • Scientific American (dumbed down recently - almost all articles should be understandable by anyone)
  • Science News (understandable by anyone)
  • New Scientist (understandable by anyone)
  • Discover (understandable by anyone)
  • Popular Science (understandable by anyone)
  • National Geographic (understandable by anyone)
This list isn't exhaustive, just the ones I'm familiar with - there are other science or sciencey magazines out there I've never read.
...until this forum has led me to find answers to some particular questions.
This forum has provided you a great deal of information that you almost always ignore, making up your own answers out of whole cloth based on whether they conform to your interpretation of the Bible. You have gained a bit of vocabulary but little scientific understanding.
Understand that this isn't a criticism of your rejection of scientific understandings - it's merely noting your failure, refusal or inability to understand them. To repeat the most egregious example, you don't accept that current sedimentation is adding to stratigraphic columns around the world, particularly in lacustrine and marine environments. This is definitional - it is impossible for it to not be true. It is true even if the world is only 6500 years old and the Flood was responsible for world geology. That you do not understand something so simple and obvious is representative of why you've made no progress in understanding things scientific in your 17 years here.
Otherwise I've just wanted to get a general idea of what science says about these things, and in this thread I wanted to give examples of this habit of flat out asserting an interpretation as if it were a fact. There are tons of them.
You're repeating the same criticism over and over again, but join the club - even many scientists complain about the way their science is described is the popular press and magazines. But for anyone wanting more technical information it is out there, they only need seek it out. Before the Internet your average person was limited in seeking out this technical information, but now even though many journal articles are behind a paywall there are still plenty enough freely available.
But the background of the thread is my objection to the whole idea that there are any time periods at all, that there is such a thing as a Jurassic Period, that there is such a thing as the Geological Time Scale.
Strata represent time periods - that they do not would be impossible and absurd. You should be asking whether the evidence suggests hours or eons (eons in the general sense, not the geological definition).
This makes the continual encounter with flatly asserted supposedly scientific knowledge about the ancient past doubly deceptive to my mind. Just statements I'm supposed to swallow without any reason given for it,...
You've said this several times now in this post alone. You're just following the Trump blueprint of repeating fallacies many times to make them stick in busy people's minds who haven't the time to pay close attention.
...and then later on when I've learned some creationist views I've acquired the extra cynicism of recognizing that the evidence for all of it is just a few things found in a rock.
Tell us what that evidence suggests and why? You can start with the geological structures in Jar's thread:
Over all these years at EvC (and by the way it's only been about ten overall since there were very long gaps in my presence here) I don't recall anyone pointing out this evidence I'm asking for either,...
Volumes and volumes of evidence have been posted to you over the years, you just don't read most of it, and the rest you don't understand. Already in this thread alone your reply rate is below 50%.
...the whole discussion is always just an assertion: Oh yes the Cambrian in the Grand Canyon was originally a beach with pebbles on it and such and such a climate and so on and so forth.
This is just a lie. How we know the environment of the Tapeats was explained to you many times in the Evolution. We Have The Fossils. We Win. thread. Here's an example of an explanation of one detail by Edge in Message 845, but repeated in other posts by other people:
Edge writes:
The boulder is derived from a Shinumo highland and basically rolled, slipped and washed out on the Tapeats beach (yes, still wet) and was eventually buried.
You next asked how the boulder broke off from the Shinumo, and Edge explained that it eroded from the Shinumo hills that rose above sea level, then was subsequently buried once it had fallen to the beach. You then rejected this explanation in Message 875. As has been said many times, you don't have to accept the scientific explanation, we're long past expecting that from you, but any sentient being should have no trouble understanding it, and any honest person with a shred of integrity would not claim the explanation has not been provided. I see I even repeated it in Message 880:
Percy writes:
But that's what Edge means when in his reply in Message 879 he says that gravity caused the large boulder of quartzite to come to rest on the Tapeats beach below, once the forces of erosion and weathering caused it to break off the Shinumo hills above.
Back to your message:
I may be forgetting a very rare case or two where the evidence was seriously argued for the interpretation,...
You are exhibiting either amnesia or dishonesty on a massive scale.
...but mostly I have the impression that the Tapeats is either being called a beach or the Cambrian is being described in terms of a transgression or something or other,...
Ah, so you do remember the explanations, though in a disjointed fragmentary form.
...reifications of interpretations without any discussion of the connection between the actual evidence in the rock and the interpretation, let alone any attempt to justify this methodology.
This is a complaint with no basis in fact. Boulders are eroded off cliffs and fall onto beaches all over the world. This is from Garrapata Beach in Carmel, California, where boulders are eroded from the hills lining the coast and fall to the beach below:
So it's seemed to me I'm the only one here who mentions that the time periods are interpreted from a mere flat rock and its contents.
Many strata are not flat or uniform, they vary greatly in extent, and they all eventually pinch out or end in some way, but otherwise this is true - the geologic column was constructed from the evidence of and in the strata.
That's why it's good to get ANY acknowledgment that it is indeed the stuff in the rock that is interpreted into the time period landscape.
When has anyone denied or tried to obscure that we're interpreting the evidence of and in the strata? Could you stop making spurious and silly accusations?
A key component of our interpretations of strata is that the present is the key to the past. We know that boulders erode off coastal hills and cliffs and come to rest on the beaches below because we see it happening today. And even a person who has never seen a boulder on a beach would understand that once erosion has eroded a piece of rock off a cliff face that it has no place to go but down. Understanding erosion and gravity isn't rocket science.
And I know you mentioned one source in an earlier post, a marvelously unique recognition in my experience, about how salts and coal in the rocks indicate the climate and swampy conditions ascribed to the Jurassic period. That is RARE it seems to me. I'll go to that post next.
You are again exhibiting either amnesia or dishonesty on a massive scale.
But I also still think it's all a crock.
And your evidence-based analysis for reaching this conclusion?
Nevertheless I think it should be made a lot more explicit exactly what stuff in what rock is interpreted as evidence of features in the supposed time period. The connection should be made explicit in every case.
It has been. Many times.
Will you be upping your response rate above 50% in this thread? Will you again ignore 50% of the information provided, reject the rest, then later claim that none was ever provided?
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 21 by Faith, posted 05-27-2018 3:51 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 51 by Faith, posted 05-28-2018 12:14 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


(1)
Message 52 of 877 (833934)
05-28-2018 12:29 PM
Reply to: Message 23 by Faith
05-27-2018 4:07 PM


Re: Nope, it's not for the "scientifically literate" and the public deserves more respect
Faith writes:
There are LOTS AND LOTS of examples of this flat out assertive way of presenting both Old Earth Geology and the Theory of Evolution, which has been driving me crazy since before I became a Christian or knew anything about creationism.
This confirms what we've suspected for some time now - you never really accepted geology and evolution.
Well, but I DID accept evolution -- I wasn't reading anything about geology, that was a brand new discovery for me when I started posting here -- I accepted evolution but did have questions, and trying to track down the reasoning for it was extremely frustrating. I thought it should be available to the average interested person, I wasn't planning to get any deeper than that.
Why do you think what interested you would be of any interest to "your average interested person?" How were you expecting answers to your unexpressed questions to arrive? In the next issue of Life magazine? The lack of answers is not the fault of anyone but you and your lack of motivation to get answers. Answers to your questions were not hidden away. It's not like you ever visited a library and checked out books on evolution, which would have answered all your questions.
But, given how little you've managed to learn in all your time here it is doubtful that any source of information could have helped you. You believe the Bible trumps evidence, so what good is evidence to you? You just make up whatever you believe might be consistent with what you think the Bible says. For you evidence never enters into it. And despite all the explanations provided to you but that you've ignored, in this thread you're complaining that rarely has anyone provided any explanations. It's been my experience that you work very hard at avoiding explanations (and the people making them) when they argue against your views.
Yet another example of you avoiding explanations is the crinoid described by Moose in the Evolution. We Have The Fossils. We Win. in Message 2568. You were very interested at first, but when explanations addressing your questions were provided suddenly it was all making "my eyes roll so hard they want to jump out of my skull," and then you stopped responding. The truth is that you're not interested in discussing evidence and explanations.
And again about magazines, you do realize that magazines are for-profit enterprises, right? They go to a great deal of effort fine-tuning their content to their audience. They are not minions of Faith's conception of what they should be printing, nor idolators of the Faith Plan for How to go Bankrupt. If you didn't get the answers you wanted about evolution, that's on you.
Evolution I no longer accept at all and never will.
Of course you accept evolution. In your view there was hyper-evolution all over creation after the flood.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 23 by Faith, posted 05-27-2018 4:07 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 53 by Faith, posted 05-28-2018 12:54 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


Message 56 of 877 (833942)
05-28-2018 1:08 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by Faith
05-27-2018 4:13 PM


Re: The public needs to earn respect (and also be willing to learn)
Faith writes:
Any large formation made of sedimentary layers was formed by the Flood.
Given the problems with this view that have been described for you, why do you think this? Specifically, to mention just one formation, how did the flood produce this:
This is, of course, the Navajo Sandstone. How did the Flood create eolian deposits?
Even if you're going to insist on a Flood scenario it is still way past ridiculous that you insist that the flood denuded all landscapes down to bedrock. It is immediately obvious to all your fellow Floodists that not all landscapes were washed into the seas, that some had to have been left behind intact because some strata are so obviously terrestrial. You're alone in your irrationality.
Of course there's still the problem of how terrestrial strata could have marine strata beneath them, but at least as far as absurd problems you'd have one less.
I don't know how the reef was formed.
Of course not.
Half Done wasn't formed by the Flood but by the volcanism after it.
You mean Half Dome, which is granite, an intrusive igneous rock. It isn't volcanic in origin.
That's all you're getting from me.
We didn't get anything from you except ignorance, erroneous declarations and typos, though I guess for a mere two-line post that is a significant achievement.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 25 by Faith, posted 05-27-2018 4:13 PM Faith has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


Message 58 of 877 (833946)
05-28-2018 1:55 PM
Reply to: Message 30 by Faith
05-27-2018 4:47 PM


Faith writes:
1. I disagree that believers in the Flood need to try to deal with all the questions about how the Flood did this or that, and agree with mike the wiz on that subject.
Does anything about this attitude seem unscientific to you?
That's why I wasn't interested in that thread.
So it has nothing to do with your inability to answer the issues Jar raised?
I think it will eventually be conclusively shown beyond a doubt that the Flood did occur, even shown with a minimum of evidence,...
Given that the Flood explains nothing about the geology of the planet, the same as a century ago (which means that there's been no progress in at least a hundred years), why do you believe this? Isn't it just empty bravado?
...so that all the other questions become irrelevant for that purpose, questions to be answered in the new context that assumes the Flood occurred, rather than as evidence for its occurrence.
"Assumes" is a very poor choice of words. Science will never assume the flood occurred. It will have to be demonstrated with evidence.
Since this is how I approach the subject,...
You approach the subject unscientifically.
...most of your questions are also irrelevant,...
Given that they concern evidence that geology explains, why do you think they're irrelevant?
...but since you continue to nag me about them I will make some comments.
Pressing you to address the issues instead of running from them is not nagging. Of course, sticking to the topic is never in your interest, so or course you attempt to distract attention from the topic through a constant stream of accusations (like nagging) hoping to prompt a response that will give you an excuse to ignore that person.
From 1 to 4 I don't know.
Here's 1 to 4, and of course you don't know:
  1. In stratigraphic columns, why does radiometric age increase with increasing depth?
  2. Why does radiometric age also change laterally across a strata?
  3. Why are radiometric isotopes older than 80 million years completely missing, something that could only happen if they'd had at least 4 billions years to decay?
  4. What causes magnetic sea floor striping, and why is it consistent with radiometric ages?
Don't you think your inability to address these basic issues reflects very poorly on your proposed Flood scenario?
  1. In stratigraphic columns, why do fossils appear increasingly different from modern forms with increasing depth?
This is an overgeneralization since there are some very odd creatures in the recent periods. The following is from Historical Geology which I believe was written by our own Dr. A:
I've emphasized some of the oddities:
Quaternary
Marked by the existence and spread of modern humans and the decline and disappearance of many groups of large fauna extant in the Neogene.
Neogene
Skull of a Smilodon (commonly known as a "saber toothed tiger"). Contains recognizable horses, canids, beaver, deer, and other modern mammal groups. The Neogene also contains many large mammalian fauna no longer extant: glyptodonts, ground sloths, saber-toothed tigers, chalicotheres, etc. First hominids found in Africa.
Paleogene
Marked by the diversification of mammals and birds. Among the mammals we see the first that can be easily identified with modern mammalian orders: primates, bats, whales, et cetera. Similarly representatives of many modern bird types are identifiable in the Paleogene, including pigeons, hawks, owls, ducks, etc. Now-extinct groups of birds found in the Paleogene include the giant carnivorous birds known colloquially as "terror birds".
But there are a lot of "modern" creatures in the Paleogene with a few strange ones, but even more weird creatures above it in the more "recent" period. Mammals and birds, but not "modern" ones.
Why do you think you have an argument here? And why do you think the creatures mentioned are odd?
Anyway, odd or not, the issue is that fossils are increasingly different from modern forms with increasing depth in the geologic column, not increasingly odd. You're going to have to try again.
Reading on in the list there are a few I probably have an answer to but now I'm tired from putting together the above reference so I will come back to it.
One reference and you're tired? Oh my! Anyway, when you do try to provide an actual answer to #5, you might try answering #6 at the same time, since they're closely related:
  1. In stratigraphic columns, with increasing depth why are there first no mammals, then no dinosaurs, then no reptiles, then no amphibians, then no fish, then no multicellular life?
Keeping a running count, so far you've addressed 0 of the 27 issues.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 30 by Faith, posted 05-27-2018 4:47 PM Faith has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


Message 60 of 877 (833949)
05-28-2018 2:08 PM
Reply to: Message 32 by Faith
05-27-2018 4:56 PM


Re: Nope, it's not for the "scientifically literate" and the public deserves more respect
Faith writes:
I didn't say anything about respecting the reader's "opinion," but they should be given the basic respect for their intelligence of not expecting them to buy into a flat assertion without any justification as if they were children.
You should have some respect for magazines' ability to judge their readers' level of interest in detailed explanations.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 32 by Faith, posted 05-27-2018 4:56 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 65 by Faith, posted 05-28-2018 3:00 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


(2)
Message 61 of 877 (833950)
05-28-2018 2:15 PM
Reply to: Message 34 by Faith
05-27-2018 5:05 PM


Re: Nope, it's not for the "scientifically literate" and the public deserves more respect
Faith writes:
OF COURSE NOT. I expect just enough information on the evidence so people know something about HOW THE CONCLUSION WAS ARRIVED AT (maybe even how stupid it is) and aren't kept in the dark and have enough motivation to look up more information at the public library or whatnot.
Several points:
  • Again, magazines work hard to understand their audience.
  • You're only making this complaint about a single topic, evolution, and only because you reject it. You don't really care about the explanatory level magazine articles choose.
  • You're not interested in evidence anyway, so what would be the point?
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 34 by Faith, posted 05-27-2018 5:05 PM Faith has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


(1)
Message 63 of 877 (833953)
05-28-2018 2:43 PM
Reply to: Message 39 by Faith
05-27-2018 10:32 PM


Re: Corals
Faith writes:
Environmental conditions would have been much more favorable to living things before the Flood to make a difference in rate of growth. That doesn't involve any differences in physics, chemistry or biology, just circumstantial things like temperature and food availability.
...
Again it doesn't sound like he took into account the usual idea that the pre-Flood environment was much more favorable for living things than conditions after the Flood, which should have been true for corals as well as everything else. There
Why do you think environmental conditions before the Flood favored incredibly high rates of growth?
Why can't we do anything now under controlled environmental conditions to favor incredibly high rates of growth? For example, why can't we grow a cabbage or a cow in a single day?
Shouldn't radiocarbon dating of coral reefs, whose ages have been studied extensively, reveal an extremely sudden slowing in the rate of growth after 4500 years ago?
Now that you suddenly know so much about coral reefs, perhaps you can explain this formation from Jar's list:
There are other time arguments anyway, tree rings and varves and so on so just add corals to the list.
All these things strongly contradict your flood scenario.
But I try to stick to arguments I think could prove the Flood, and arguments I understand well enough for that purpose, and try to avoid getting into other things. That means I have to prove the Flood with a few arguments if I can and all the rest would have to be dealt with later.
I continue to think it unwise for you to make claims about yourself, because that forces others to show those claims false, which causes you to lash out at them.
Anyway, you've offered no evidence or arguments for the Flood that corresponds to the real world or natural physical laws. You frequently argue issues you don't understand, such as Walther's Law and sedimentation atop stratigraphic columns.
In any case I don't want this thread to become another Flood thread. I want to get back to the Time Periods argument when I can.
Sure. What evidence do you have that strata were not deposited during periods of time, whether it was hours or eons? By the way, though we shouldn't have to keep making this clear, there is nothing in geology that declares rapid deposition impossible. Geology does believe that strata often contain evidence of the mechanisms behind their formation.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 39 by Faith, posted 05-27-2018 10:32 PM Faith has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 64 by PaulK, posted 05-28-2018 2:54 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


Message 68 of 877 (833960)
05-28-2018 3:19 PM
Reply to: Message 40 by Faith
05-27-2018 10:37 PM


Re: Nope, it's not for the "scientifically literate" and the public deserves more respect
Faith writes:
I'm really trying to make a bigger point, edge: I think this way of handling the idea of time periods reflects the basic unscientific and irrational character of the whole theory.
Do you have any evidence supporting this view of the geologic column.
There is no reason why that NG article couldn't just point out with each description of supposed conditions or features in the Jurassic time period, how this or that interpretation was based on this or that element found in a particular rock in a particular location.
What is it about "The National Geographic knows their audience better than you do" that you don't understand?
You'd be adding a sentence to each point at most and being a lot more honest, speaking of being honest, than the usual pontifical declaration of dogma.
You're just making up something to criticize about National Geographic because they wrote about a scientific theory you reject for religious reasons.
AND I think once it became clear what big pictures are based on what little evidence, and anyone not dedicated to Geology took the time to really look at that evidence in those rocks, people would fall over laughing.
The only thing humorous here is how transparent the reasons for your complaining are. Get some evidence. Learn some science. And if you're going to continue complaining about how magazines write their articles, then learn something about that, too.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 40 by Faith, posted 05-27-2018 10:37 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 69 by Faith, posted 05-28-2018 3:24 PM Percy has replied
 Message 78 by Faith, posted 05-28-2018 9:26 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


(1)
Message 79 of 877 (833989)
05-28-2018 9:47 PM
Reply to: Message 41 by Faith
05-27-2018 11:19 PM


Re: Your lists
I didn't intend for you to address the issues in those lists here in this thread. I was just illustrating how many issues you've avoided and how many issues you've misunderstand. These issues can't be addressed with simple one and two line answers as you've attempted here, but I'll go through them anyway.
Faith writes:
  1. In stratigraphic columns, with increasing depth why are there first no mammals, then no dinosaurs, then no reptiles, then no amphibians, then no fish, then no multicellular life?
I don't know
Credit for honesty, but not having an explanation is fatal to the Flood scenario.
  1. Why do you think the Grand Staircase region's geology to be representative of all geology worldwide?
Because I believe it can be shown the Flood caused it all.
That's not an answer, and it seems to misunderstand the question, which was intended as an inquiry about why you think so many things that are true geologically of the Grand Staircase region are also true geologically of other regions of the world, such as the amount of tectonic activity and the lateral extent of the strata. Why do you think this when the evidence shows that geologic strata around the world vary a great deal in the amount of tectonic activity they display and in their lateral extent?
  1. If the Paleozoic layers were already present when the Supergroup layers tilted, why do the faults associated with the Supergroup extend down into the Vishnu Schist but not up into the Paleozoic layers?
Because of the horizontal movement I believe occurred at the Great Unconformity.
This is a nonsensical answer. You haven't thought this through. Try to visualize how strata move, in just two dimensions should be sufficient, then give answering this question another try.
  1. If the Supergroup layers actually tilted, where did all the missing cubic miles of rock go?
I believe it became the schist though some is what is called "erosion."
This, too, is a nonsensical answer. Nothing in the Vishnu Schist resembles metamorphized Grand Canyon Supergroup layers. There is no bulge upward that those cubic miles of rock would create. And you don't mean erosion but abrasion, for which there is no evidence (there's plenty of exposed supergroup/Tapeats contact to examine), and again all cubic miles of rock would create a significant bulge upward.
Your scenario requires cubic miles of rock to simply disappear. That's not possible.
  1. If the Grand Canyon had been cut suddenly then the canyon walls would be vertical. How do you explain the sloping walls of the Grand Canyon?
I don't think it had to have been cut vertically. The receding Flood volume would have been greater at first, cutting a wider area, then narrower as it cut deeper into the area and its level dropped.
Not possible. The sloping sides happen naturally through their erosion in a gradually deepening canyon, not through downcutting by rapidly flowing water.
There's another aspect of the sloping canyon sides that is important to note, and that's that the sides of the canyon vary in slope. Some of the exposed canyon face is vertical, some sloped, and the governing factor is the hardness of the strata. The softer the strata the more likely it is to form slopes. Check out this diagram and you'll see that the harder strata (the limestones and sandstones) form cliffs, while the softer strata (the shales and mudstones) form slopes. This pattern is caused by erosion over long time periods:
It takes around a thousand years to erode 15 inches of limestone and sandstone, less for shale and mudstone, call it five hundred years. The Hermit Shale is 300 feet thick and it's face is at a 45 degree angle. This means that the bottom of the Hermit Shale extends 300 feet further into the canyon than the top. 300 feet of Hermit Shale has eroded away. It would take 120,000 years for that to happen.
Of course, far more than 300 feet of Hermit Shale has eroded away. The canyon is around 10 miles wide, and it would take 21 million years for that much Hermit Shale to erode away. This is, of course, a gross approximation, and it is likely less because the original river likely threaded and twisted through the region, but certainly it is millions of years.
Also, the amount of talus in the canyon indicates the passage of a minimum of hundreds of thousands of years. Most talus finds its way through erosion and gravity into the river where it is carried away by the river, so obviously far, far more talus has been produced in the canyon than is currently present.
Also, geochemical techniques can reveal how long a rock has been near the surface, and this says that the canyon was not carved all at the same time. There is not yet a consensus, but recent data indicates some sections were carved 50-70 million years ago, others 15-25 MYA, and yet others much more recently, with the sections joined together to create the pathway for the Colorado River only around 5-6 MYA. See Grand Canyon is not so ancient.
  1. Why is the rate of slope retreat at the Grand Canyon consistent with an age of millions of years?
I don't know.
It's appropriate to mention talus again. Had the Grand Canyon formed rapidly only 4500 years ago the canyon would be nearly pristine with regard to talus. The limestone (very hard) portion of the canyon sides retreats at the rate of about 15 inches per thousand years, so in 4500 years the total amount of slope retreat would be about 5 feet. There is far, far more talus than that in the Grand Canyon, as you can see in this image:
  1. What is your evidence that all tectonic activity worldwide occurred after deposition of sediments?
Various cross sections from different locations.
Well, that is remarkably unspecific.
This is related to the question about why you think world geology generally is the same as the Grand Staircase region. Evidence of any fault that didn't extend to the surface anywhere in the world would be evidence that there was tectonic activity while the Flood was depositing sediments, contradicting your claim. The New Madrid Fault System begins in Missouri and extends southwest. It is buried beneath sedimentary layers:
  1. Given the randomness of floods, why has no fossil ever been found in the wrong strata evolutionarily?
I don't know, For some reason the layers are consistent.
This is fatal for the flood scenario.
  1. How did the flood leave behind cross bedded sand dunes with animal tracks in the Coconino?
Why are you asking these questions I've answered many times before? Those aren't sand dunes, they are sand that the water cross bedded. Animal tracks occurred between waves and/or tides.
I asked because your answer, as many have told you many times, is impossible. The correct answer, for you, is "I don't know." The angle of repose indicates eolian deposits. Wikipedia says: "Several structural features such as ripple marks, sand dune deposits, rain patches, slump marks, and fossil tracks are not only well preserved within the formation, but also contribute evidence of its eolian origin." TalkOrigins adds, "Since McKee published, additional types of terrestrial trace fossils, paleosols, and other distinctive eolian sedimentary structures have been recognized in Coconino and related eolian strata."
Also, your "animals running out between waves to leave tracks" idea is more an indicator of your inability to think rationally than anything else. The idea is absurd, as is your successive waves/tides idea.
  1. How did the flood transport and deposit sediments that include burrows, termite nests, worm holes, etc.?
It didn't, it overran the nests and buried them, perhaps moved them some distance, burrows and holes were formed by the animals between waves or tides.
Same answer as the previous: absurd on its face, and the correct answer, for you, is "I don't know."
  1. What is the definition of kind?
Animals that share a basic genome.
As explained in messages you probably ignored, animals that share a genome are the same species.
  1. How can you argue about kind without a definition?
If you notice, I am usually in the process of defining it in the argument.
What I notice is that you have once again not defined kind.
  1. Why, if you believe the Bible is God's inerrant word, do you think there are exceptions to God's claim to have "destroyed all living creatures" in Genesis 8:21?
I read it as referring to air-breathing land-dwelling creatures. You may count sea creatures, I don't think the Bible does.
Your contradictory way of interpreting the Bible is noted.
  1. How did the ocean keep all the sedimentary types separate?
Well, there are examples of that happening in the Berthault film I posted sometime back. Walther's Law demonstrates that the rising sea deposits clearly separate sedimentary layers. What's the problem?
As explained in messages you probably ignored, Berthault studied flumes, and the layers deposited were at an approximate 45 degree angle. Try again.
You still do not understand Walther's Law. Continuous deposition (i.e., no unconformities) will often produce gradations from one sedimentation type to another. Sharp contacts are also a possibility. Transgressions after a period of erosion will produce an unconformity and often a sharp contact. In other words, Walther's Law can product both sharp and gradual contacts.
Also, transgressions and regressions often experience reversals producing structures like this:
Notice, for example, the tongues of Bright Angel Shale that extend into the Muav Limestone. That happened because the transgression was not continuous but was occasionally interrupted by minor regressions.
  1. Since floods only sort continuously by size/density of sediment and do not create sharp contacts, what is it about strata that says "flood" to you?
Mostly their scale I think, their hugeness. but Walther's Law deals with layers that look like they have sharp contacts.
Again, you do not understand Walther's Law. It can produce both graduated and sharp contacts.
  1. How did the deposition of sediments by a series of waves leave no evidence of that process behind?
Why should it?
Because each wave would only travel so far inland, and where it stopped it would leave an edge of sediment deposition. Right?
How deep were the sediments deposited by each wave? Just for the sake of discussion let me suggest that each wave deposits sediments 10 feet deep, and that each wave travels a mile inland. So after the first wave there's a second wave that deposits another 10 feet of sediment above the first 10 feet. After it travels a mile inland it should begin retreating, but it can't because it spills over the edge left by the previous wave. Your wave idea doesn't work.
Each layer covered up the one under it.
And each wave contained identical sediment content? Including fossils (except at that point they were actually corpses)? And including laterally so that the differences in a wave's sediment content across, say, 10 miles of coastline, were identical from wave to wave? That would be magical.
And besides I don't think ALL the layers were deposited by wavers, I think when the water was deep enough the layers precipitated out.
Well, now you're back to your problem of how layers of larger/heavier particles were deposited above lighter particles.
  1. If the flood rains washed all the land sediment into the sea, how was life left behind on the denuded landscape to leave tracks when waves deposited new sediments?
Obviously it didn't wash ALL the land into the sea.
So where can we find some of this antediluvian land? Shouldn't it possess unique qualities since it had no sedimentary origin yet sustained life anyway?
I've answered so many of these already, what a tedious project this is.
Oh, give me a break. Someone as reluctant as you to respond to posts can't brag about how many times she's provided answers. Most of your posts are short one and two liners. Your longer posts are usually just redeclarations of what you believe, not answers.
  1. Why do you think Bertault's views relevant since his experiments deposited sediments at an angle of 45 and required a flume?
It demonstrates that water makes neat flat sedimentary layers, the specifics aren't important at this point.
You won't find anyone to agree with you that something as specific as a difference in angle of 45° isn't important.
ABE: In fact early in the film a flooding creek was shown to make a neat stack of layered sediments; whereas it was being argued that "floods" don't do that. /ABE
You can tell me where in the film and I'll take a look, but it seems pretty obvious that any process depositing horizontal layers couldn't be the same one as in his experiment. You likely misunderstood.
  1. Since 3/4 of the globe is currently covered by water, how is a truly global flood that covers the remaining quarter much different?
Don't understand the question.
The world is currently 71% flooded. How would flooding the remaining 29% make much difference? How could flooding the little remaining area sticking just a tiny bit above the water represent some massive catastrophe changing the planet's geology everywhere?
  1. Why did no fishermen survive the flood?
Probably ran for cover when the rain started?
Really? The world over, not one fisherman stayed on his boat? As water levels rose, no fishermen rushed themselves and their families to their boats? There wasn't a single houseboat anywhere in the world, nothing like this anywhere:
  1. How was the original salinity of the ocean restored after the Flood?
Don't know how much salinity there was before or after and neither do you.
Well, yes, you're correct that I don't know the salinity before the Flood, since there was never any such thing. Obviously I know the salinity 4500 years ago, since it must have been just about the same as today.
It is you who is the supposed expert on the Flood. Presumably the salinity of the ocean after the flood would have had to return to its original level, so how would it do that?
  1. If the fountains of the deep were undersea volcanos, where is the evidence that many undersea volcanos erupted 4500 years ago?
I don't know if the fountains of the deep were undersea volcanoes, I think it rather unlikely myself.
If you think it unlikely then why were you pushing this idea just a month of so ago?
This is tedious because I've already answered many of these. Also the next list. I will have to come back to that.
Again, someone who responds to as few messages as you cannot complain of how tedious answering questions is. Even when you respond to a message you frequently address just a small part of it.
And meanwhile all this stuff about the Flood is really OFF TOPIC here so I don't want to continue it after I've answered the lists.
Someone who turns a thread in the Biological Evolution forum into a flood thread cannot complain about others being off-topic.
By my count you answered 0 of 27 questions.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 41 by Faith, posted 05-27-2018 11:19 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 95 by Faith, posted 05-29-2018 4:27 PM Percy has replied
 Message 97 by Faith, posted 05-29-2018 4:56 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


Message 87 of 877 (834011)
05-29-2018 6:44 AM
Reply to: Message 47 by Faith
05-28-2018 10:34 AM


Re: Nope, it's not for the "scientifically literate" and the public deserves more respect
Faith writes:
You insist on not getting the point so I'll drop it. But I really do think if even you yourself took some time to think it through based on what I've been saying, you, even you, would have to see that the system of creating whole landscapes/time periods with particular climates and geographical features out of salt and coal found in rocks doesn't hold together.
But strata corresponding to time periods is precisely what you just argued has happened. Quoting you from your Message 41 in reply to a question from me:
Faith in Message 41 writes:
  1. If the flood rains washed all the land sediment into the sea, how was life left behind on the denuded landscape to leave tracks when waves deposited new sediments?
Obviously it didn't wash ALL the land into the sea.
So any antedeluvian land not washed into the sea was once a landscape full of life, and now it is buried beneath layers of sediment from the Flood and lithified. It's now strata representing a time period.
Of course none of us believe that, but you have to believe it because you just said it. Though of course you could prove it to us by pointing us to somewhere in the world that some of this antediluvian strata can be found. For now it's just another of your evidence-free out-of-the-blue claims.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 47 by Faith, posted 05-28-2018 10:34 AM Faith has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


(2)
Message 88 of 877 (834016)
05-29-2018 10:25 AM
Reply to: Message 50 by Faith
05-28-2018 11:58 AM


Re: Your second list
Again, I didn't intend for you to answer the issues in these lists in this thread. I provided those lists only to make clear how many issues you've failed to address, usually for one or more of several reasons; a) You fail to answer entire messages; b) You answer only one or perhaps two of the issues raised and ignore the rest; c) You answer detailed posts with one or two lines; d) You don't address the issue at all but merely restate your original position from scratch as if no problems had been raised; e) You respond to the issue in a way that makes clear you still don't understand it.
Just a quick scan of your post reveals that your responses are far too brief to have actually addressed any of these issues, but I'll respond anyway
Faith writes:
And here are a list of things Faith still has doesn't understand or has misconceptions about:
  1. Constructive discussion.
Ha ha. Couldn't it be that it's impossible to have a constructive discussion on this subject in this place? Ha ha, of course not, has to be a fault of mine.
Your recent honesty regarding some questions by replying "I don't know" is refreshing, but in general your discussion tactics involve discouraging constructive discussion as much as possible. See the above list in my first paragraph.
  1. How to anchor views in facts.
No point in answering such accusations.
So you plead nolo contendere regarding your failure to connect your wild ideas to facts.
  1. Subordinating everything to the Bible is not science.
If you mean subordinating relevant facts to the Bible, sure it is.
Subordinating facts to a religious book is religion, not science. What you're doing is religion. This bears on the previous point, your failure to perceive a need to connect ideas to facts.
  1. Math.
Yes I'm bad at math.
More refreshing honesty.
  1. Physics.
This I know I'm good at.
You are remarkably poor at physics. You are even remarkably poor at having an intuitive feel for how the real world works, despite, one would assume, living in it all day every day.
  1. Walther's Law.
I don't know if I misunderstand it or not, I may very well understand it just fine, though I couldn't trust you to recognize that. In any case as I've many times said, the only thing that interests me about Walther's Law is the fact that rising sea water lays down layers of sediments.
Oh, trust me, you badly misunderstand Walther's Law. Walter's Law is not about water transgressing across or regressing from a landscape, though of course transgressions and regressions provide a common example of Walther's Law in action.
Walther's Law is about depositional environments moving across a landscape, often due to slow transgressions and regressions. Your idea of waves repeatedly washing miles onto and then retreating miles from the land is not Walther's Law - it includes no persistent depositional environment such as you can see at any coastline. Your scenario is closer to repeated tidal waves such as happened in Japan after the 2011 earthquake.
Perhaps you have visited the ocean for a week. There the ocean beach is, day after day, runoff from land delivering sediments to the beach, the waves grinding and separating the sediments into sand that remains at the beach and smaller particles that remain suspended in the active shore water and are carried away from the coast where they eventually sink in quieter water. Is the sea transgressing or regressing? It's so slow that it's impossible to tell, though the likelihood today with climate change and rising seas that the sea is transgressing. But it is very, very slow. The depositional environment along the beach, and the different depositional environment further from the coast, and the still different depositional environment far from the coast, are all moving slowly inland. This slow migration of depositional environments is Walther's Law. It isn't floods or waves.
  1. That the strata of the Grand Canyon formed through Walther's Law, except the Coconino.
RAZD showed that Walther's Law explains it, and it must also explain the Coconino whether you like it or not.
Your use of the pronoun "it" renders your comment ambiguous, but Walther's Law is about depositional environments associated with shifting land/water boundaries. The Coconino is eolian and could not have been due to Walther's Law. Either you or RAZD can refer me to the post where RAZD supposedly said whatever you think he said, and I will respond.
Moose challenged my view of Walther's Law in a very unspecific way in Message 2306 of the Evolution. We Have The Fossils. We Win. thread ("My impression is that Faith is misusing Walther's Law less than Percy is misusing Walther's Law."), and then when asked to clarify became even more unspecific. I challenge Moose to get specific about in what way I am misusing Walther's Law. It's way past time to lay this Walther's Law issue to rest.
  1. The claim that no terrestrial landscape is as straight and flat as strata is false.
The claim is true and the efforts to prove it false are so beyond idiotic, in an atmosphere where the physics-challenged Boss disagrees and I have nobody to agree with me we're talking about a really weird setup that has nothing to do with science.
You deny the evidence before your very eyes, for example, Kansas from the air. It's actually flatter than most strata:
But please don't get this issue confused with the issue of terrestrial landscapes like this become strata. It is possible, of course, but extremely unlikely. Kansas at an average elevation of 679 feet is very, very likely just a way station for sediments on their way to the sea. If no uplift occurs, or if rising sea levels get seriously out of hand, then eventually Kansas will be at sea level with the ocean nibbling at its borders, and its landscapes will be consumed by the processes of Walther's Law. They will not be preserved in any stratigraphic column.
  1. Strata are not as flat and straight as Faith thinks, even at the Grand Canyon.
They are exactly as flat and straight as I think, only you have a problem seeing it.
You think wrong. This diagram illustrates some of the strata contacts that are not flat and straight:
Note the Surprise Canyon Formation and Temple Butte Formation, both of which have irregular contacts with strata above and below, and both of which pinch out at points.
  1. Strata are rarely uniform with regard to sediment type.
A major stupid nitpick.
Actually it's a significant misconception on your part.
It's utterly irrelevant that there are small imperfections since to the naked eye they are almost perfectly uniform and science calls them by their sedimentary names.
You are dead wrong that they are "almost perfectly uniform". The labeling of a layer as limestone or standstone or siltstone are frequently compromises of nomenclature. For example, here's the description of the Tapeats Sandstone from the USGS website:
quote:
Brown and red-brown, cliff-forming sandstone and conglomerate. Includes an upper slope-forming transition zone of nearly equal distribution of brown sandstone of Tapeats Sandstone lithology and green siltstone and shale of Bright Angel Shale lithology, and a lower unit of cliff-forming sandstone and conglomeratic sandstone. Lower cliff unit consists mainly of medium- to coarse-grained, thin-bedded, low-angle planar and trough cross-bedded sandstone and conglomeratic sandstone; sandstone beds 6—24 in. (15—60 cm) thick. Unconformable contact with underlying Middle and Late Proterozoic surface that forms the Great Unconformity. The Tapeats fills in lowland areas and thins across or pinches out against young Proterozoic highlands. Variable thickness 0—400 ft (0—122 m)
Note where it says that the upper Tapeats is significantly different from the lower Tapeats, and that the Tapeats includes siltstone and shale. And it isn't just sandstone everywhere.
What kind of flimflam are you trying to pull here?
I'm trying to insert some facts into that concrete bunker of a head of yours.
I'm talking about the ones that ARE called by the sedimentary names, the limestones, the sandstones, the chalks, the mustones and so on.
Yes, I know what you're talking about, and you're wrong. Want another example? Here's the USGS description of the Bright Angle Shale:
quote:
Green and purple-red, slope-forming siltstone and shale, and interbeds of red-brown to brown sandstone of Tapeats Sandstone lithology. Includes ledge-forming red-brown sandstone member of McKee and Resser (1945). Consists of green and purple-red, fine-grained, micaceous, ripple-laminated, fossiliferous siltstone and shale; dark-green, medium- to coarse-grained, thin-bedded, glauconitic sandstone; and interbedded purplish-red and brown, thin-bedded, fine- to coarse-grained, ripple-laminated sandstone. Includes gray, thin-bedded, fine-grained, micaceous silty dolomite in upper part of unit in western quarter of map area. Intertonguing and facies change relationships with the underlying Tapeats produce variable thickness trends. Contact with the Tapeats is arbitrarily marked at lithologic vertical and lateral transition from predominantly green siltstone and shale to predominantly brown sandstone in slope above the Tapeats cliff. Thickness is about 350 ft (107 m) in eastern quarter of map area, thickening to about 500 ft (150 m) in western quarter.
Note the many different types of rocks that are described, from siltstone to shale to sandstone, with different types of each. Hardly uniform.
I'm just giving you facts. These last couple facts kind of help you, since the non-uniformity of strata in terms of both composition and flatness is more what one would expect from a chaotic Flood. Of course there are still the other many problems, but these particular facts allow you to shift your ideas in a way that brings them into a slightly closer correspondence with reality.
  1. Life in the past lived and died and sometimes became entombed just as it does today, above, atop and beneath surfaces of terrestrial, marine or lacustrine sediment, not on flat slabs of rock.
In other words I must completely abandon what I know to be true and just accept the establishment view. That is science to you. Wowsie wow. The rate at which that scenario happens in the present is ludicrous as an explanation for the abundance of fossils. Blech. Here I am having to deal with this crazy list of denigrations of my abilities just because the Boss can't think straight.
Well now you're simply denying reality. Obviously life has lived and died and sometimes become entombed at all times during life's history. Some strata are fossil rich (Redwall Limestone), some strata are fossil poor (Coconino - occasional trace fossils at best).
Had corpses been suddenly buried a mere 4500 years ago there would be significant tissue remains in at least some fossils. We have no trouble extracting DNA from mastadons and Neanderthals from tens of thousands of years ago - that there is no DNA in ancient fossils says they are not 4500 years old, as does the total lack of any 14C or even any bone at all - for example, most dinosaur bones are completely mineralized, no bone left.
The number of fossil species identified is less than 5% of the number of species on the planet today. If fossils were preserved so prodigiously during the flood and if antediluvian life was so much richer and varied than today, then we should be finding many more fossil species than we do. But we don't, and that's yet another fact the flood doesn't explain.
  1. Most strata are marine. While terrestrial landscapes can become strata, they usually don't.
Navajo Sandstone isn't a stratum, Moenkapi isn't a stratum, all the cliffs of the Grand Staircase aren't strata. What a revelation.
You sound confused here. I said that terrestrial landscapes don't usually become strata, not that they never become strata. The Coconino and the Navajo are terrestrial strata. The Moenkopi (not Moenkapi) is a marine stratum consisting of sandstone and shale with gypsum layers in between. Many of the layers of the Grand Staircase above the Kaibab are coastal or swamp or lacustrine, not terrestrial.
  1. Lithified soil is called a paleosol.
Golly gosh another amazing revelation.
This item was added to the list when you got paleosols wrong. Specifically you said in your Message 2760 of the Evolution. We Have The Fossils. We Win. thread, "'Earth' can't become a sedimentary rock; 'soil' can't become a sedimentary rock." Since a paleosol is soil that has become sedimentary rock, you were dead wrong.
Have you changed your mind and now believe lithified soil is possible and actually has a name: paleosol.
  1. Rocks do not form by drying but by diagenesis.
Actually somebody here corrected you on that years ago...
Nobody could have corrected me because it is true: rocks do not form by drying but by diagenesis. Jar's post merely noted that some rocks form by the drying up of water, forming crystals. I didn't know why he interjected that at the time, and I still don't, since we were talking about sedimentary rock in the Grand Canyon.
...and even put up a link showing that simple compaction/drying out does form some rocks.
I don't think so. See if you can run that down and we'll straighten this out once and for all.
But no matter what Jar was saying, it doesn't apply to sedimentary rock like sandstone, siltstone, shale, limestone, etc. Take a shovelful of beach sand or of offshore muck or of calcareous ooze and plop it down in your driveway in the hot sun and wait for it to turn to rock. It'll never happen. The closest you'll come to rock is dried blobs that crumble easily. Look up diagenesis and lithification.
But I never made that claim anyway, all I ever said was that compaction hardens them enough to hold their shape during various kinds of erosion, even the cutting of the Grand Canyon. Have you ever worked with clay?
No, I haven't worked with clay, but the layers of the Grand Canyon are not lithified clay. And you did make that claim. You said that the canyon was carved while the rocks were soft, and then the compressed but soft rock now exposed on the canyon walls dried into hard rock. Rock does not form by drying. Any soft strata at the base of the canyon with a mile of rock above would have been extruded into the canyon like a giant flat noodle maker.
  1. There are no underground rivers and streams eroding buried strata (karst structures are a different matter).
There is absolutely no reason why not, it's perfectly reasonable that after the Flood water running between layers would erode away some of them.l In some situations such stream erosion would form what are really karsts in effect. Too bad you have no ability to visualize the physical world.
This displays ignorance on at least a couple things. Karsts form because limestone is soluble in water. Other sediment types are not soluble.
There is no water flowing underground. Aquifers are not giant underwater lakes - they're buried regions of water-permeable rock whose water content is 5% at best. Underground water doesn't flow, not between layers nor through layers. There are no underground rivers in any conventional sense. Underground water seeps through rock at a very slow rate.
Here in New Hampshire those who live outside cities and larger towns (which provide town water) mostly get our water from wells drilled into rock. Our well is 330 feet deep, mostly through rock, no liner required for most of it (you usually only need a liner for the top portion until you reach rock). The water is in rock that is part of an acquifer (water is in almost all rock, but rock in an aquifer contains a higher percentage of water). They drill down until they reach an aquifer, then they drill another 30 feet or so that there's a considerable surface area of rock out of which water can seep into the well. The pump is placed at the bottom of the well.
About the percentage of water in rock, some aquifers have a higher water content in their rock than others. We're lucky, our aquifer, though much deeper than most (many people in the neighborhood didn't have to drill deeper than a hundred feet or so), is water rich, and we can pump faster than 5 gallons/minute if we want. Some neighbors were not so lucky, dropping multiple wells on their property in search of a decent aquifer. They actually have maps of the aquifers in our neighborhood, the local water authority puts them together, but their accuracy is only so-so.
Our unfortunate neighbors have only been able to drill into aquifers with flow rates of 2 gallons/minute or less, barely enough for a shower, and certainly not enough to do more than one thing at a time, like take a shower while someone else flushes the toilet. Large holding tanks can help, hydrofracking can help, in some cases multiple wells can be joined together.
That's probably too much detail about wells, but the point is that underground water is in the rock, not in underground lakes and rivers. There are no open spaces underground - the overlying weight of sediments crushed out all open space long ago. There is no such thing as underground lakes and rivers. There are no rivers flowing underground (again, we're not talking karsts here). There is no erosion underground.
  1. Buried strata cannot tilt without affecting surrounding strata.
Well it usually does knock them around quite a bit, leaving only a layer or two in many cases, but it left the whole stack in at least one case I know of. And actually it DID "affect" the surrounding strata, it pushed them up and created the Kaibab Uplift and slid them horizontally a quarter of a mile. Fair amount of effect there.
You are living in fantasyland. Buried strata cannot tilt without affecting surrounding strata. Cubic miles of rock cannot disappear.
  1. Angular unconformities happen when sediment is deposited atop tilted strata, such as at Welcombe Mouth Beach.
Gosh you are sure the champion of the Status Quo, no imagination. That beach is a ridiculous example anyway.
This is a non-answer. You obviously still do not understand that sedimentation continues today atop stratigraphic columns in much of the world, certainly at least 71% of the world, because that much is ocean.
  1. Accelerated continental drift with the attendant accelerated creation of sea floor at mid-oceanic ridges would release enough heat to boil the oceans. This is even without taking into account the heat from friction and subduction.
Righto. It must be that I don't "understand" these things, can't be that I disagree with them. That's all this ridiculous list is about.
If you recall you conceded math was a weakness for you. I did the math for you, first for the mid-oceanic ridge example, then for the example of a candle under a pot of water, something you promised to come back to but never did. If you can't follow the math and aren't interested in putting in the effort to learn the math then you are doomed to ignorance and have only one avenue open to you, the one typically resorted to by the ignorant and the one you have apparently chosen: ridicule.
  1. In the oceans, sea floor sediment depth increases with increasing distance from mid-oceanic ridges where the sea floor forms. Sea floor near mid-oceanic ridges is young and has little time to accumulate sediments, while that far from mid-oceanic ridges is much older and has had much time to accumulate sediments.
    The sediments comprising strata were always deposited during a particular time period, whether the millions of years of geology or the year of the Flood.
In the year of the Flood there was only one continent and no Atlantic Ocean. In fact even according to your establishment explanation the Atlantic Ocean didn't begin to form until, what was it, the Jurassic Period?
This doesn't address the issue and indicates you don't understand the problem. Read the point again with emphasis on the parts about increasing sediment depth with increasing distance from mid-oceanic ridges. The sediment depth adjacent to the North American continent represents far more than could be deposited in 4500 years.
  1. The sediments comprising strata were always deposited during a particular time period, whether the millions of years of geology or the year of the Flood.
You accidentally left this one out of your list and so provided no answer.
  1. Stratigraphic columns continue to grow today, mostly at low points such as lake and sea bottom.
There is absolutely no stratification happening today anywhere that is a continuation of the Geological Column or even like it.
This a bald declaration with no explanation. You still do not understand that sedimentation occurring today is atop existing stratigraphic columns.
  1. Fossil abundance varies widely among strata.
So?
You said fossil abundance is so great that it proves the Flood. You don't seem to understand that fossil abundance varies widely among strata. Whether in the aggregate that means fossils are abundant or rare or somewhere in between cannot be known, both because you've provided no data, and abundant is qualitative, not quantitative.
  1. Life buried today could eventually become fossils.
I guess, just nowhere near the rate necessary to account for the abundance in the Geological Column.
You fail to address the point: life buried today could eventually becomes fossils. Your claim that the rate is too low to account for fossil abundance (something you don't really know, which was the previous point) is unsupported by any data - it's an empty claim.
  1. Speciation does not take millions of years.
That's for sure. What's your point?
In your Message 1494 of the Evolution. We Have The Fossils. We Win. thread you accused us of believing it takes millions of years to produce new trilobite species: "Millions of years to get the different species of trilobite is absurd." No one believes that, and the fact that you think we believe that represents yet another issue you misunderstand.
  1. Old evidence is still evidence. Evidence has no expiration date.
Gosh a Sturdy Fact if there ever was one. It's point, however, eludes me.
You argued that evidence from the distant past has no value. Evidence that has survived to the present is still evidence, no matter how old. You don't seem to understand that.
  1. Vegetation and trees did not keep buried sediments loose so that the 40 days and nights of rain could wash them into the ocean.
Eh? Roots and especially the deep roots of tall trees do indeed keep soil loose. Look it up.
Tree roots sure don't keep soil loose around here. I looked this up as you suggested and found nada. I did find this: "The majority of a large tree's roots are in the upper 18"-24" of soil."
You've either forgotten the original explanation, or, more likely, never read it or never understood it. Roots only go so deep, only a few feet at most. Even if tree roots went down ten feet, how is that going to keep sediments loose that are 50 feet down, a hundred, a thousand, a mile. You don't seem to understand that your argument about roots keeping soil loose, even if true, which it probably isn't, only applies to the top few feet. It doesn't extend to the rest of whatever underlies the landscape. You don't seem to understand this simple point.
  1. The dog does not have enormous genetic diversity compared to other species today. It can be no more genetically diverse than the gray wolf from which it is descended.
I include the wolf with the whole collection of dog breeds, but if all the dogs descended from the wolf they would have left the wolf with less genetic diversity.
The origin of dogs was not a population dividing into daughter populations but just a few wolves drifting off to live with humans. Wolves genetic diversity would be highly unlikely to be affected in any significant way. Plus DNA analysis reveals at least several significant episodes of dogs and wolves interbreeding.
  1. A definition of kind that is different for each kind is not a definition.
But of course I never said anything of the sort. I was looking for the best way to define the kind morphologically and it worked for some species but not others.
You provided different definitions of kind for different kinds.
Well, I lost one somewhere along the way. Not going to try to correct it.
I added it back in.
By my count you were 0 for 28 in demonstrating an understanding of any of these issues.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 50 by Faith, posted 05-28-2018 11:58 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 89 by Faith, posted 05-29-2018 10:44 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


(1)
Message 134 of 877 (834087)
05-30-2018 9:36 AM
Reply to: Message 53 by Faith
05-28-2018 12:54 PM


Re: Nope, it's not for the "scientifically literate" and the public deserves more respect
Faith writes:
Yes I'm sure magazines print what they think represents science at the appropriate level.
Yes, of course.
Unfortunately in the case of the Geological Time Scale that turns out to be pure mystification and unfair to the public.
This complaint about magazines is spurious. The information is out there for anyone who wants it, more so today than ever in the history of man. The geologic column is backed by mountains of evidence gathered over centuries with no evidence calling it into question, and much of that evidence has been presented to you here at EvC.
Any magazine that accurately represents currently accepted science unadulterated by religious mysticism is doing the public a service.
Got a popular Geology magazine that isn't too expensive I could consider getting?
Why, with the Internet at your fingertips, with websites like Wikipedia and search engines like Google Scholar a keystroke away, are you seeking out magazines for the general public?
I see Modulous pointed you at a blog, and you might also try Earth Magazine, articles available online.
And why do you enjoy your straw man stuff so much> No I do NOT accept "evolution" by which any reasonable person would know I meant the THEORY OF EVOLUTION. Of course I accept MICROevolution.
That this is an inconsistent and contradictory position has been noted many times before. Microevolution is evolution within a species. Your completely unsupported declaration lacking all detail that kinds (whatever a kind is) experienced rapid evolution to form all the species we see today is not microevolution.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 53 by Faith, posted 05-28-2018 12:54 PM Faith has not replied

  
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