Faith, the work we do in the field is what leads us to our theories.
Once the early naturalists were able to construct a column based on the order of fossils in the rocks, which you don't seem to have a problem with, it was later noted that the fossils changed not only vertically, but also laterally; and these changes were tied to subtle or significant changes in the rocks as well. Different types of rocks contained different types and varieties of fossils.
Say you're standing on a beach in Australia looking out towards the Great Barrier Reef and the open ocean. You are standing on a sandy beach, but if you walk into the water far enough, the sand changes to carbonate and you will eventually reach the reef - full of marine life of all types. If you kept walking, however, you'd be in water over your head and you would eventually reach the portion of the ocean where shale is being deposited. These sediments are all being deposits contemporaneously - the beach sands, the carbonate, and the shale. Each one of these environments contains organisms that have adapted to life on a beach (clams, insects, plants, etc.), to a carbonate system (coral, fish, clams, starfish, gastropods, plant life, etc.), and to a shale environment (sharks, squid, different bivalves, ammonites, burrowers, etc.). While some marine life can cross into different ecological systems, some do not. Coral reefs are restricted to certain environments based on water depth, temperature, and clarity.
Yes, of course lateral difference is to be expected, and especially so on the Flood theory.
These are the same relationships the early naturalists found in the rocks. Shales contained fossils resembling modern fossils found in deeper sea environments, limestones had fossils similar to those found in modern carbonate settings, and adjacent sandstones (found interfingering with limestone),were found to contain fossils similar to those found on modern beach environments.
Interesting, thanks. This would also be consistent with Flood theory, and it is good to understand that there are these natural linkages to be expected -- that is, that certain fossils would naturally be most likely associated with certain sediments, and therefore perhaps carried together in the flood waters.
These observations clearly indicated (and hence our interpretations that you don't like) that the rocks represented various depositional settings.
It is the making of these depositional settings into specific discrete eras of millions of years in duration, into "landscapes" that you believe covered the surface of the earth for such a long period, that I have the problem with, not the depositional settings as such.
Mapping out the aerial extent of these various rock units (i.e., shale, limestone, beach sands, etc.) produced maps that looked exactly like modern coastal settings, replete with coastal swamps (coal deposits), volcanoes (supplied the ash layers often found in shallow continental sea deposits), alluvial and fluvial (stream) systems, etc.
This is how we moved away from the flood theory. You cannot have various depositional settings during a global flood. Everything gets mixed together and homogenized and order is lost.
The expectation of such jumbling may well be a problem for flood theory, but the idea that over hundreds of millions of years one "depositional environment" succeeded another in a particular geographic location, in such a way that each "environment" was preserved intact, is just a lot harder to make sense of.
You call the layers "horizons" for instance. It's as if you are imagining this thickness of sediment -- just one particular sediment and no other -- just kind of being there, and this depositional environment scenario playing itself out on its SURFACE, at the top of it (ignoring the "landscapes" that should have occurred at each foot of deposition or within each layer as it appears to us now), which we now see as the upper edge of a layer abutting the lower edge of another layer. So somehow you seem to be thinking of time as arranging itself in these blocks of environments, which are all neatly labeled, Carboniferous, Jurassic and so on. In this frame of reference, time is not a continuous stream, it's broken up into these "periods" and periods that are oddly characterized by the uniform deposit of one and only one particular kind of sediment -- or in some cases mixed thin layers -- but still uniform for that period. The surface of the earth now is not just one thick layer of one kind of stuff, or even for much of any local geographical area, so why should it ever have been?
Now you say these blocks of environments are found throughout the world. Yes, you say, there are changes in sediments and fossil contents from one place to another but it's nevertheless apparently possible to identify a particular "era" somehow. I don't have a problem with this although I think a flood would maybe have jumbled the strata a little more than apparently occurred.
The problem for you is that throughout the entire geologic column, there is ample evidence that large portions of the globe were underwater at the same time others were subaerial.
But this would be the case at various stages of a Flood's receding, some land above water, some below. And I don't get why "subaerial" contents wouldn't have been simply moved along in the flood and STILL appear as subaerial contents because that's what they originally were. Something about this has always confused me. Sanddunes (Coconino sandstone) for instance just got temporarily covered in water, and swept along on a huge wave, and covered by another huge wave laden with something else. Their sand would still retain their character as sand-dune sand. Tracks in mud during the receding flood period might have had a short while to dry before the next wave full of sediment came and covered it over and preserved them.
In addition, the stratigraphic column is not complete except in a few places around the world, which conflicts with what would be expected if the strata were all deposited in one global event.
Oh not at all. One would expect a lot of difference from one place to another, different strata. It is more of a problem for flood theory that there is as much consistency across the world as there is.
This, along with the evidence of depositional settings (and many other things), tells us 'time periods' or paleolandscapes were an important part of this earth's geologic history and therefore difficult to explain via a flood interpretation.
Well, see above my ruminations about the notion of such landscapes having such a complete individual life span of their own and then getting buried by another complete landscape.
me: If organisms died due to suffocation IN the sediment, then we would not find evidence of teeth marks on fossilized skeletons, or even large dinosaur teeth embedded in fossilized skeletons, and we would find more evidence of fur, hair, feathers, skin, etc....
The fact is teeth marks and teeth embedded in complete fossil skeletons would not be possible during a flood. Teeth marks indicate the skeleton was stripped of flesh (eaten) and skeletons stripped of flesh cannot remain intact during a deluge of Noachic proportions. They would be scattered within days of heavy rains and flooding. In addition, we also find intact dinosaur nests. The amount of rain necessary to erode the continents and to form the geologic column, would wipe out something as fragile as nests and fleshless skeletons. It is sensible to assume that.
Unless these things just happened to be rapidly buried in the mud that would have rapidly accumulated.
If all the organisms died at one time, why are they spread out over the entire column which is thousands and thousands of feet thick? This doesn't make sense in anyway. Hydraulic sorting does not sort on morphological characteristics as far as I know.
The idea as I understand it is that different living things were moved along with different sediments and settled out into separate layers -- or were moved along and washed up in separate waves or currents to their final position in the column.
The reason there are so many marine fossils in the rock record has to do with the 1) most of the world is covered by water and always has been, 2) marine settings are extremely rich in life especially carbonate systems, 3) carbonate settings are most often located adjacent to continents, and 4) marine settings are particularly conducive to fossil preservation. Therefore, it's no surprise that a large portion of the rock record is composed of marine rocks and fossils and so this line of evidence is not necessarily indicative of a flood.
Not NECESSARILY, but it remains to my mind the most likely explanation, which is strongly supported by all such acknowledgments of the extent of marine settings necessarily involved in the geo column.
This message has been edited by Faith, 03-11-2006 05:31 PM
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