Did the Flood really happen?

I think you already ended the charade. This thread was your opportunity to bring forward your evidence showing that the Flood really happened. You're instead repeatedly declaring that the Flood is an assumption. Should we ask a moderator to drop this thread into summation mode?--Percy

Thank you for not quoting anything. I just love these little puzzles of figuring out what part of a long message you're responding to. You say you're referring to the "whole diagram" now: And you're saying that the Flood deposited sediments flat and horizontally, and then tectonic forces and the state of being water saturated caused the strata to take the form they currently have. Can you describe how that happened for just one stratum? Specifically, how did tectonic forces and water saturation transform the originally flat and horizontal and uniformly thick circle-filled stratum into it's current appearance. Here's a closeup of its most irregular portion: About your Flood and original horizontality, that's not really possible for the first sedimentary layer deposited on the former land, is it. When the Flood wiped clean the continental surfaces, it didn't also make them horizontal, flat and without features, did it? The land still had irregular contours and tended to become higher in elevation with distance from the original coast, didn't it? If that's the case, then the first sedimentary layer must have been deposited upon a non-horizontal surface, right?Can you explain how there could be scouring water flowing everywhere over the entire Earth and wiping the continents clean? Water would start by flowing into the lowest basins, and then it would just keep flowing into these basins causing their water levels to rise. Rising water levels are not a violent flow and would not scour land surfaces.The coasts by the sea would have experienced minimal flow, wouldn't they, since the water was already right there and the coasts would have been covered in water very quickly. Or are you imagining violent flows of water deep beneath the surface? If so, what would have driven these flows, and why don't we see any such flows in the oceans today, which cover 71% of the Earth. Can you describe for us any evidence of these flows?Perhaps you should seek evidence of the Flood on mountain sides, since once water covered everything but the mountains the flow should have greatly diminished, there no longer being any place for water to flow to. This means that the scouring would be much greater at the base of mountains than at the top. Shouldn't we be able to see this?The general point here is that things that happen leave evidence behind, and the most significant event in the history of the Earth should have left massive amounts of evidence behind. Where is it?--Percy

Edge replied to this message already, but I wanted to address some things that he didn't. Apologies if I repeat some things he already said. I don't think anyone understands what you mean by collapsed strata. What is it about the strata of the Great Unconformity and Siccar Point that lead you to describe them as "collapsed?" By "strata of the Great Unconformity" I assume you're referring to the strata *below* the unconformity at the Grand Canyon, which would be the Supergroup. So let's break out the diagram so we can see which wavy strata you mean: I don't see any wavy strata just below sea level. Can you be more specific about where you mean by giving us some kind of guideposts, such as saying, "I'm referring to the strata just below sea level and beneath the word 'Cretaceous' in the diagram." Or even better, you could use peek on some of my previous posts to see how to zoom in on a small portion of the diagram, then you could display precisely the part of the diagram you're talking about. First, the "granite rock" on the far left is not a granite rock. It is a mound of sedimentary layers. It is not anywhere as steep as it appears in the diagram because the vertical dimension is greatly exaggerated. Here's a closeup of it. Look carefully and you should be able to see the lines that separate the layers of strata: Second, I want to be sure I understand what you're saying. Are you saying that the strata in the diagram to the right of this mound were once vertical, not horizontal, and that they were situated atop this mound in a vertical orientation? Do I have that right? If so, what evidence led you to this idea? What are you seeing in the diagram that suggests to you that this was once the case? If I understood you correctly then it's not hard to visualize at all, but it has got to be one of the most crazy ideas you've ever suggested. Everyone agrees that horizontal deposition is what happens when other factors aren't present. Even sediments deposited upon a slope will tend to eventually become horizontal, as sediments tend toward the lowest point and will fill the lower elevations faster. What does "it" refer to? That is, what is that you imagine started over there on the far left at the mound? Of course. There's nothing particularly special about current sea level. Sea levels rise and fall, and of course the strata will remain continuous through time unless faulting is somehow introduced. What makes sense? Again, if I understood you correctly, you're proposing that the strata were once in a ridiculous vertical configuration sitting atop that mound, but you haven't explained why you think that, or how such a configuration could have come about. Crazy is exactly the word for it. If it's not crazy then you're going to have to provide evidence and a rational explanation. This is a very tough sentence to parse. I'm unlikely to interpret it correctly, but I'll give it a try. I'm going to assume that where you said "left of the island" (which would be off the diagram) that you really meant "on the left side of the island," because it would make no sense to speak of strata that are not on the diagram.Given that assumption, you appear to be saying that the bottommost strata on the left side of the diagram that are below sea level are continuous with the strata to the right. I think we would all agree with this since that's precisely what the diagram appears to show. But I don't think anyone understands what you mean when you say those strata to the right "'collapsed' into their current wavy situation." Collapsed how? From being vertically stacked atop that mound?So do I have that right? If so, then none of it makes any sense, particularly the part about the strata being vertically oriented atop the mound and then "collapsing" into their current configuration. One big problem is that distance from Snowdon to Harwich is about 200 miles, so if those strata were once vertical then they would have extended 200 miles into the sky, which is above the altitude of many satellites. If I understood you correctly, what you're suggesting isn't a paradigm so much as a collection of crazy ideas that have no evidence and appear to be self-evidently impossible. I'm not familiar with the geology of England, but probably most if not all of the strata in the diagram (unfortunately there is no key) are marine. This stratigraphic diagram by Smith seems to indicate that they must all be marine, the only possible exceptions being the sandstone layers. Maybe Edge can confirm whether they're all marine or not: You are correct that we all believe the evidence of geology that these strata were deposited over the past 500 million years and were originally fairly horizontal and flat, except when deposited atop a layer that was not horizontal and flat. But I don't think anyone knows what you mean by "collapsed." Communication will be fine once you describe what some of the things you've said mean, such as the strata being configured vertically atop that mound, and the strata collapsing. I don't think the Siccar Point unconformity and the Grand Canyon unconformity are contemporaneous events. The Siccar Point unconformity is only about an 80 million year gap from 425 to 345 million years ago. The Grand Canyon unconformity is a roughly billion year gap from 1.7 billion to 550 million years ago. I don't see how they could be related. By GC I assume you really meant the Great Unconformity at the Grand Canyon. The Great Unconformity is very unusual in it's great extent, but it is still only continent wide, not worldwide. Here's a stratigraphic diagram. You can see Hutton's Unconformity near the bottom: It's not that your ideas are so different they can't be understood. It's that what you're trying to say often isn't clear, and when it is clear it's often impossible. Addressing my requests for clarifications and answering my questions would help make your ideas more clear.--Percy

You've said yourself that the Flood is an assumption. If you're correct then of course you can't prove it (prove meaning support with strong evidence and rationale). Repetition of ideas you've made up can't prove an assumption. What happened to the Flood being an assumption? It isn't just the fossil record. All the evidence points to an ancient Earth, none to your Flood. Again, what happened to the Flood being an assumption? Because why? You're just casting aspersions at science that shows your religious views wrong. Seek evidence instead. A theory is shown untenable using argument supported by evidence, something you don't do. You instead write posts like this one. I'm sure no one can fathom why you believe this. I think all of us here will follow wherever you're able to show the evidence leads. Yes, your majesty.--Percy

I don't understand why you quoted my paragraph - nothing you said in reply answers any of the questions. You said tectonic forces and being saturated with water caused the irregular shape of the stratum running through the center of this image: Now you're presenting a completely different story, that the whole length of strata wass stood upright atop Snowdon. Read the caption at the top of the diagram. It says, "Diagram Section From Snowdon to Harwich, About 200 Miles." If you stood those strata upright they would reach way up into space. I think you should make an effort to visualize this, strata standing on end and rising a couple hundred miles into space. Again, no one doubts that deposition tends toward the horizontal. We're asking you how you explain non-horizontal and very irregular strata boundaries, like the one in the closeup above. So far you've offered two completely different explanations: a) tectonic forces and water saturation; and b) the strata stand on end on Snowdon and then collapse. Which is it? Either way, both have severe problems. And then in the next paragraph you concede that it doesn't. Inconsistent much? You've been saying "far left" up until this point, so I assume you really meant "far left" and not "far right" here. Stop messing with your disallowed words. They're still available from peek. So if all the strata were submerged when the important events happened, why do you keep talking about the strata above sea level separately from the strata below sea level? This is where you contradict what you said earlier. You evidently do understand that sediments deposited upon a non-flat non-horizontal will result in a non-flat non-horizontal boundary. So why are you insisting that the irregular lower boundary of that stratum with circles formed in some other way than simply that the lower surface was already that way when the sediments were deposited atop it.And of course the sediments deposited atop it will tend toward the horizontal since the lowest regions tend to fill with sediment faster. Snow examples might not be helpful to people in Nevada, but that's how it works. The snow falls evenly everywhere, but the lowest points fill in faster and after a heavy snowfall you can look out at your front steps and see nothing but a smooth slope. Still not sure what you mean by wavy strata. Maybe all you mean is strata that aren't flat and horizontal, that they're not like the strata at the Grand Canyon when viewed from a distance? There's no mystery. The distortions in the layers of the diagram were caused by forces of uplift and subsidence, possibly tectonic. How do you know how much rain there was? What evidence do you have for the amount of water from rain versus the fountains of the deep?And just from a practical standpoint, how do you imagine scouring water flowing everywhere upon the earth. Consider a hill, for example. Where is the scouring flow of water across the top of the hill going to come from? At some point the top of the hill will just be an island in the middle of a vast sea. Where is the scouring flow of water going to come from that removes this hill from the landscape? What evidence do you have of widespread mudslides 4500 years ago? The way you figure out what happened is to look at the evidence. If you don't know how to figure out what happened then why are you telling us what happened? How much of the world are you imagining was vulnerable to mudslides? In your view the pre-Flood world didn't have mountains but only low hills with mild slopes, and it was extremely lush with vegetation that would anchor the soil. And your evidence for this? So let's say the water is collecting in a basin at a very rapid rate, and the water in the basin is also expanding at a very rapid rate of 1000 feet/hour. That's only a few inches per second and is a very mild flow. Where do you imagine your violent scouring water flows are coming from? That doesn't answer the question. If the sea coast was submerged by rising water, then there was no scouring flow there. Right? That doesn't answer the question, but I agree that it depends upon what actually happened. What evidence do you have of what actually happened? But you should still be able to find pre-Flood hills and study if the pattern of scouring supports your scenario. That would be evidence. If you think every pre-Flood hill was washed away, then what is your evidence of that? You haven't cited any evidence. All you've done is told farfetched stories. The strata give every appearance of being slowly deposited over long time periods in a variety of depositional environments. The order of the strata is contrary to a flood cause. The distribution of fossils is antithetical to a flood cause.--Percy

The Bible is a storybook, not a compendium of fact, evidence and scientific observations. Anyone entering facts into this discussion must show that they are actual facts. "The Bible says so," does not establish factuality. Then unless you can show that any information you draw from the Bible is factual, you have no argument. Should we get a moderator to drop this thread into summation mode? It's up to you, but the word "assumption" seems apt.You must be able to support any claims you make. You have this tendency to demand that things you or the Bible say be taken as true without evidence, that even just saying them makes them evidence. You can't seem to tell the difference between a story you make up and evidence. Strata and fossils are terrible evidence for you. None of the stories you've made up about them withstand the slightest scrutiny. If the strata and fossils are such good evidence for you then explain how the flood sorted them in ways contrary to how we know the physical world works. You've actually offered explanations many times, and each time people have pointed out in detail why your scenarios are impossible. The only thing that seems to keep you pushing these hopeless ideas is that you don't understand most of science or how the real world works. What you've been doing these many years is akin to someone relentlessly pushing that 2+2=5 for no other reason than that math comprehension is beyond them and 2+2=5 is what they like.--Percy

Do you mean this diagram? My interpretation of the Snowdon portion (on the left) is that there are some granite outcroppings on the surface, which from other articles I've read I think must be intrusions. Smith describes the sedimentary layers of Snowdon as "Kllat and Slate". I could not find a definition of "Kllat". One article I saw claimed that much Snowdon strata are volcanic ash.Snowdon is not a granite mountain, and definitely not some huge granite rock. Edge earlier commented that the other diagram may indicate some granite at the left base of Snowdon in the other diagram. Can you describe where in this diagram that strata built upon granite is indicated: --Percy

But you provide no explanation that makes sense and that conforms to the evidence for why you think this. All you do is call things names like "crazy" and "absurd" and insist they couldn't possibly be true and make up your own impossible Flood-consistent stories, and then you insist that what you said is evidence. It isn't. Since most sedimentary layers are marine, why you comparing them to dry land? Nor should they be. Land and marine landscapes should in no way resemble each other. Marine environments experience net deposition while land experiences net erosion. The two should not resemble each other at all. They are as much opposites as is possible.But the marine strata of geologic history do very strongly resemble the sedimentary layers being deposited upon the beds of all the oceans, seas and lakes of the world today. Some strata have a nice neat appearance such as at the Grand Canyon, and others do not, such as these from the Book Cliffs area of Utah. How does your Flood explain this: But you can only *say* "that's untenable," you can't show it. But people have shown the flood idea untenable many times using a wide variety of evidence. You actually managed to include a fragment of truth in that sentence. Yes, Walther's Law is responsible for the progression of strata, but you've again misdefined Walther's Law. Walther's Law is not about the "mechanisms of deposition of water." It just assumes those. Walther's Law is about how lateral movement of depositional environments results in horizontal strata.Imagine Walter's Law to be like a special asphalt paving machine that can lay down several asphalt layers of different types simultaneously by having several extruders in sequence instead of just one. A paving machine like this moving along a roadway and leaving multiple layers of asphalt behind is like a transgressing sea moving across a landscape. Sand is deposited at the coast, shale/mudstone off the coast, and limestone further from the coast, and they're all being deposited at the same time. We know this because we observe it happening today. You again seem to be operating under the delusion that you don't have to show how anything false, you need merely say it is false. When you're actually able to show that the fossil order is an illusion you let us know. Because why? You've typed many words many times denying the possibility, but you've never said anything that showed you were right or that even made any sense. Don't be silly. These are just empty declarations. If all trilobites are the same species then a hippopotamus and a giraffe are the same species. But you always claim you've presented evidence when you haven't. Your say-so does not constitute evidence.We observe a variety of depositional environments all around the world. A coastline is different from just off the coast is different from far from the coast is different from pelagic (deep sea) environments is different from lakeshore is different from mid-lake is different from river and stream banks is different from mid-river and mid-stream. Again, the geological strata are obviously just lithified versions of the sedimentary layers being deposited today. You haven't given "those scientists" anything to think about.--Percy

By river I assume you mean one where the water is flowing. Sediments do not fall out of active water, such as that in a flowing river. Add a half inch of soil to a tall glass, then fill it the rest of the way with water. Stir for a few minutes, since you said "laying down" would take no more than a few minutes. While still stirring have someone measure how much soil has fallen out of suspension. You'll find nothing at the bottom of the glass, except maybe some of the larger rock or sand grains swirling around. The soil remains suspended in the active water. Stop stirring. How long does it take for all of the soil to fall out of suspension so that you again have a full half inch of soil at the bottom of the glass? In other words, how long before the water is fairly clear. It will be much longer than a few minutes. It will probably be a day or two.This shows that the behavior of suspended particles in water is contrary to what you claim for your Flood, that the sediments fall out suspension quickly. Small particles, which is what most sedimentary strata are mostly made of, will stay suspended in the active waters of your Flood. These particles will only begin to fall out of suspension when the Flood waters become fairly still.Another thing you must explain is how a flood that was only a couple thousand feet deep over the land (because there were only low hills in the antediluvian world and the flood only rose a little above the highest hill) could deposit sediments a couple miles deep. The Bertault flume experiments deposited sediments at a steep angle, not horizontally. This is queued up at the exact right spot in case you don't remember: And how was the Flood like a flume or a flash flooding river? This would seem to contradict your claim that the Flood behaved differently from anything at normal scales because of its sheer immensity. If you mean a sequence of layers being deposited simultaneously one atop another, you haven't described any means by which this would be possible. The 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption deposited volcanic ash and material from pyroclastic flows, not sediments carried by water. That volcanos can do this was well known for a very long time before Mount St. Helens, and there are plenty of layers of volcanic ash and basalt in the geologic column.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.

Because of the way Faith structured her paragraph I found your answer a little unclear, so in case others do also, when you say, "The order you refer to is not Walther’s law," it's about where she refers to "an order based on the mechanism of deposition of water." Earlier in the paragraph Faith referred to the order of the strata, calling it "NO order," which is, of course, untrue. She usually has the strata of the Grand Canyon in mind, and those strata were formed by processes covered by Walther's Law.--Percy

So looking at the diagram again: When you said that there are orderly patterns I thought you were going to comment about the ordering of the types of layers of sandstone, shale/mudstone and limestone and so forth, but you instead describe formations that have coarser sediments at the bottom than at the top. What symbols in the diagram indicate this, and aren't formations with the fine sediments at the top and the coarser at the bottom more representative of deposition by water that became gradually less active over time than of slow deposition over thousands of years in a fairly consistent environment?--Percy

The accuracy of radiometric dating has been established by correlation with tree ring data back about 14,000 years. The accuracy of Bible dating has been established because Faith says so.--Percy

I found where the image came from, a book in Project Guttenberg: Cambridge County Geographies: Devonshire by Francis A. Knight and Louie M. (Knight) Dutton, 1910. Here's a link to the diagram, and here's a link to the section on geology.We first obtained a copy of the diagram from the Wikipedia article, Geology of Great Britain, which found it in a different book at Project Guttenberg, Cambridge County Geographies - Cornwall by S. Baring-Gould. University Press 1910. Here's a link to the section on geology, and if you scroll down a bit you'll find the diagram. The description is different, focusing on Cornwall instead of Devonshire.No legend, though.--Percy

You already conceded this isn't true, that the lower boundary of sedimentary deposits will follow the contours of the surface they're deposited upon. Yes, of course. Your use of the term "upright position" in Message 494 seems very misleading. If someone handed you a stack of three or four floor tiles and told you to put them in an upright position, how would you orient them? But the entire diagram is "on the island proper." There's no way to tell what part of the diagram you're referring to. Tilt upward or downward toward the left? I still can't tell what strata you're referring to. I think you're operating under a serious misconception. Sea level is only on the diagram as a point of reference. Sea level does not divide a stratum into two pieces, as if the part above were in some way different or separate from the part below. It is still a single continuous stratum. Were you to examine the stratum at the precise point where it passes from above to below sea level you would not see any difference.All the strata were deposited while below sea level, or Flood level as you prefer. How high or low that level was at the time can't be known since both sea and land levels can rise and fall. All the strata were submerged when the sediments forming them were deposited. You have yet to be clear about what part of the diagram is the "irregular 'wavy' section," but you again make the mistake of thinking that current sea level is somehow significant in interpreting how the strata were deposited and what happened to them after deposition. Terminology like "standing the whole island upright" is very misleading. It sounds like you're saying that the whole island stood on end. We know now that that isn't what you mean, but you should try to use more clear terminology, or even better, standard geological terminology.We understand you mean a time when all the strata were horizontal, but just looking at the structure of the various formations tells us that there was never a time when they were all horizontal, that some formations were tilted and eroded before others were deposited. Again, that is not a rock on the far left. It is Snowdon, a small mountain made up of various sedimentary strata. I wasn't able to make sense of "lying on its side," but about the rest, you seem to be saying that the layers to the right of Snowdon were at one time atop Snowdon. This would appear impossible, particularly for the strata making up Snowdon that continue downward and to the right. Please explain how strata that are part of Snowdon could have at one time been atop it? Edge didn't reply. JonF and PaulK replied, but not to those points. As I read it now it looks very difficult to tell what you mean. I did this for you in Message 554.--Percy

You're still operating under the delusion that just declaring something so makes it so. If the Bible were truly "a compendium of fact" then it wouldn't have so many internal and external errors and contradictions. The Bible isn't a false book, just a book like any other book written by fallible people, some true, some false, some indeterminate.But this is not a Bible thread. I only mentioned the Bible as part of the confirmation of the validity of radiocarbon dating, which shows that many archeological sites, including ones mentioned in the Bible, existed before, during and after the Flood. This is a Flood thread. You need to show that your Flood really happened, and there's nothing about those sites says Flood 4500 years ago.--Percy