Meert / Brown Debate

But presumably you've seen earthquakes on TV, right? And volcanoes and stuff?Presumably you've looked at a map, and observed how South America and Africa fit together, or would, if there wasn't a lot of ocean in the way?Presumably you know what GPS is, right? So presumably you would trust the results when GPS data confirms that the land we stand on moves?If you want to see a fault, look at this one in California:
{Rescaled photo to "100%", which fits the normal page width for my browser, if not Percy's - Adminnemooseus}You're telling me you've never seen a picture of the San Andreas fault? If there's a top ten list of visually distinctive geological features, this one has to be on it.This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 05-27-2004 02:13 AM

One more thing: if you're then what was the purpose of this little analogy: Now, I don't think I'm the only one here who thought your intent was to say "close enough isn't good enough; it has to be perfect." Now you're all like "I'm not saying it has to be perfect", when it's obvious that was exactly what you were saying. What gives?

Just trying to be open minded. Something you have yet to grasp.

What you have yet to grasp is that it's stupid to be so open-minded your brains fall out.At some point, no matter how open-minded you are, if you want to know the truth, you have to eliminate untruth.That requires closing your mind to what you can conclude is untrue. Once you've done that, there's only one thing left - the truth.Now, you shouldn't be so closed-minded that you don't re-examine your beliefs in the presence of new observation. But you don't simply re-examine your beliefs just because some internet yahoo told you to. You haven't presented anything new. You're just trying to make me out to be close-minded simply because I've done what you haven't yet - examined the facts and eliminated the untruths.Look, we don't re-try trials just because some jackoff walks into the courtroom and says "Tim McVeigh wasnt guilty! Don't be close-minded, try him again!" I've assessed the evidence to the best of my ability, and rejected creationism and ID as untrue.I'll assess them again if you have new evidence, but I'm not going to waste my time doing it just because you want me to. You may consider that a closed mind - but the only rational position is to be close-minded to untruth. Anything else is insanity.

I happen to have both seen and touched a fault as well as been touched by a fault.I was living in California during the San Fernando Valley Earthquake back in 1971.We woke early in the morning when our dogs started barking. Then things began moving. It was pretty obvious that it was an earthquake and not all that small a one either. My wife and I tried to get out of bed but the damn bed kept moving under us. Doors and drawers opened and closed, pictures fell off the wall and we could hear the sounds of breaking glass coming from the kitchen.It was barely light out, the street lights on the Ventura hills across the harbour were still lit, and we could see the lights swaying behind the stationary masts of sailboats moored in the canal.Later in the day we were inspecting damage. There was a crack in the patio about two feet wide and deeper than I could reach with an extended broom. The garage on the building had been shoved up almost three feet so that the deck on the roof of the garage was now midway up the sliding glass door that opened onto it.Based on personal experience, I can attest that Plate Techtonics is NOT just a theory, and that there most certainly are forces capable of raising mountains. In this particular case, by about 2 meters in a matter of seconds.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Are you sure about this, Jar? 2 meters seems like an amazing amount of growth. (I couldn't find any solid numbers during a quick Googling.) The 1994 Northridge earthquake caused the Santa Susana Mountains to grow by only 38 centimeters.--Macavity

It was not amazing, it was awsome. Quite literally. Here is a link to some data on it. I am perfectly willing to accept just about any height change from the smallest to the largest figures. The absolute amount is really not important.The key fact is that plate tectonics happen, earthquakes happen and it is absolutely true that such movements can raise what was once at sea level to tens of thousands of feet above sea level.One big differnce between the San Fernando quake and Northridge was that the San Fernando Quake was a Thrust type, it actually broke the surface, while Northridge was a Blind Thrust. The San Fernado Quake would produce escarpments while the Northridge would produce the folded and bent strata.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Off topic, but I like talking about earthquakes...I was doing some research on quakes a while ago and I found some pictures on the net of a fault displacement in Japan (Kobe or Kyoto, can't remember which). A road had been built across the fault line and displaced by about a metre and a half. As far as I'm aware, large displacements are entirely possible locally even if the fault as a whole only moves by a lesser amount.The Rock Hound

Jar:Don't get me wrong here, I'm not arguing for a minute that plate tectonics don't happen, or don't cause earthquakes/mountain building. I'm just surprised that an earthquake can uplift an entire mountain range so severely---and so quickly!Basically, I don't have any real argument, I'm just freakin' amazed.Rocky:I also like talking about earthquakes. Yeah, I've seen plenty of pics of vertical displacement around faults on relatively flat land, but I've never heard of mountain ranges growing by meters on account of an earthquake. If it's true, consider me duly impressed!Ok, that's it for my off-topic chatter.--Macavity

If you're impressed with 8 feet, have a look at this sitehttp://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/usa/1964_03_28_pics.htmlThe uplift during the 1964 earthquake was 33 feet!!

Many people are suprised. But stop and think for a second.The San Fernando Earthquake happend slightly over 5.2 miles beneath the surface yet broke the surface along a stretch of over 12 miles in length. Compare that to Mount Everest which is 5.4 miles high. So one rather moderate to severe earthquake moved a block of continent equal to the height of Mount Everest.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Well, we're officially way off-topic here... but if the mods don't object, I'll try and clear this up. I now see the problem I was having envisioning rapid mountain uplift. In post 80 you said "there most certainly are forces capable of raising mountains..."And I didn't have a problem with that statement, I just couldn't believe that a whole range could be uplifted that quickly. Why? Well, mainly because I stupidly forgot about where and how faults are distributed throughout a given mountain range. (e.g., a typical fault-block range.)Another reason I kept stumbling over the thought of rapid uplift is because I had my mind fixed on the mistaken notion that mountains were uplifted primarily by way of isostatic adjustment--which, of course, is considerably slower and less dramatic. Anyway, I finally found a paper that describes vertical displacement within a block of the San Gabriel Mountains during the '71 quake. You can read the entire paper (which is quite interesting, BTW) here:http://www.johnmartin.com/earthquakes/eqpapers/00000018.htmThanks for setting me straight,--MacavityP.S. Trixie, thanks for the link.

Well, probably the reason why most people don't care to debate with this guy, and or discuss the theorys he presents is they feel he's an idiot. If you havent searched around or looked up what other websites say about this guy, you really should. I mean, lets look at a few of his theorys logically...1. The water all trapped beneath the crust, pillars of rock holding up the continents and land above.Sure, that's all well and good. But anyone with any knowledge of mining and or a plain old science book could tell you that the further down you dig, the warmer things get. The heat and pressure would just keep rising on these undergound pockets of water since they have no place to go. Exactly how hot would things be? Well, lets just say it'd be the worlds fastest steam fryer, hot food in hundreths of a second. 2. The releasing water sends rock and other particles into a low and brief orbit to later rain back down upon the earth as ice.Whoa, hold on there... Do you have any idea how fast water would have to move in order to actual get into even the lowest of possible "orbit" conditions? And secondly, we already know from common sense that pockets of water that deep are gonna be hot. What happens to your hand when lift the edge of a lid of a pot of boiling water... steam burns sound familiar? Well, there goes half the earth to the giant vegetable steamer...3. Ice raining from the sky afterword.This ones common sense too. The higher something gets, the faster it starts to fall before the air gets thick enough to start slowing it down again. Since this theory involves water shooting, and I quote "high above the atmosphere," it falls apart. Anything falling from "high above the atmosphere" would experience a normal re-entry just like anything else we shoot into space and be super-heated and melted by the air friction on its way down. Kind of hard to bury something in ice that melts on its way.Then we have the assumptions he continuously makes throughout the entire theory...A mammoth cant survive in the cold because an elephant can't.
Guess that means anything that looks alike must be alike.The speed of light must have been faster in the past to make the universe look older, all because an atomic clock can't keep 100% perfectly perfect time.Animals and plants had to be preserved by the hydroplate theory and water lenses because they became flattened.
And somehow they wouldnt become flattened by years of layers and layers of dirt, ice, debris and water piling up on top of them?Animals and plants couldnt have evolved in stages because we've studied up to 3000 generations of a fruit fly and not seen changes.
Never mind millions upon millions of generations in the wild, 3000 should predict everything.Evolution isnt plausible because fossil records don't show the animals evolving over time.
Yes, and of course things become fossilized isnt a difficult process and it's not possible that largs parts of land where things evolved are on the coastlines that are now underwater because of raised water levels?I could go on and on with 100's of more things from his website, all the same. His way is just as much a guess as other ways but his way has to be right because he says so. that's basically what I got out of reading his theories.

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~~Please keep your arms, legs, and outright stupidity inside the ride at all times.~~

ChadRayTay,Welcome to EvC Forum! I'm not exactly sure why you addressed this post to me. I assume that the "this guy" you're talking about is Walt Brown, yes? If so, you're preaching to the choir; Walt's ideas have no merit.In future posts you might want to make an effort to be a bit clearer, and so avoid any possible confusion. Also, when you make statements like this: Please be sure to give attribution or post a link to the source you are quoting from. (Though I suspect you were just saying that for rhetorical effect.)Finally, you might want to be a bit hesitant about awarding the title of "idiot" to someone when you screw up the spelling of "theories." Makes you look bad, ya know? Again, welcome to the forum.--Macavity

I haven't read the whole thread, but what I have read confirms my beliefs about evolutionists and their specious charges against creationists.I am sorry, but Walt did the right thing. If the guy wanted to include religious beliefs into the debate, he clearly did not want to debate the issue on the facts, end of story.It would be nice if an evolutionist was willing to debate the facts with Walt. He has an interesting theory, but basically, fat chance of that happening.I don't see any dishonesty in Walt Brown in this matter at all. If an evolutionist does not want to debate the theory on scientific grounds alone, then that says a lot about the evolutionist, not Walt Brown