Unfortunately this thread is about to be ended and I don't know which of the posts to answer here. Let me try Crashfrog's answer to NosyNed's.
(Ned) I don't understand what you are saying Crash. If a layer is underneath another one then, of course, it was laid down before the higher one.
Naturally, yes. That's the Law of Superposition.
What Faith seems to be saying is that some process carts over an inch of sediment in a wheelbarrow or something and lays it out to bake in the sun for 8000 years before any new sediment is added. He's objecting to that because he doesn't understand how a layer of silt could sit there for 8000 years without something happening to it. I'm objecting because I don't understand where he got the idea that sediment solidification happens at the surface.
I'm a she. No man I know would take the moniker "Faith."
The great ages of the Geo Column model that mark off the particular deposits of limestones and shales and sandstones etc. REQUIRES that for enormous periods of time those deposits were at the surface. This column was built up, right? It started with a layer at the very bottom, and another layer was eventually built on top of that and so on, right? If underwater it might have a chance of remaining relatively undisturbed for long periods, but 8000 years? 20 million years? before the next completely different kind of sediment starting depositing on top of it. This is implied in the rock formations themselves, the different types one on top of another, and the theory that this represents huge spans of time during which one kind built upon another kind.
If it occurred out of water, unless there's some way the sediment could harden almost immediately on the surface, which I believe is impossible, it could not have remained a layer at all. That being the case these layers could not have retained their neat horizontal disposition such as we see in the Grand Canyon. Even if this was formed underwater TWENTY MILLION YEARS is a LONG LONG time for a few feet of ONLY ONE KIND OF DEPOSIT to sit undisturbed. And if that were not ludicrous enough by itself, then we are supposed to believe that a completely different kind of sediment SUDDENLY (sharp demarcations between the types of rock in the canyon, from one kind of limestone to another kind, or to shale or to sandstone) began to deposit and the other kind which had been depositing for millions of years just stopped altogether. This is IMPLIED by the rock formations themselves, the great ages assigned to them, etc.
Yes, I don't understand how a thin layer of "silt" covering the extent of the huge surrounding area of the Grand Canyon could remain undisturbed for 8000 years unless this were a planet like the moon rather than windy rainy Planet Earth, but not just "silt"-- we're talking ONE KIND OF LIMESTONE -- JUST limestone, and ONLY that ONE kind, say "redwall," of the "Mississippian" supposedly building up in this neat layer for TWENTY MILLION YEARS, ABRUPTLY changing to a totally different kind of limestone or shale or whatever, for MORE MILLIONS OF YEARS.
I never said solidification happens at the surface. I said that the OBVIOUS FACT THAT IT DOES NOT makes the Geo Column model LUDICROUS, because SINCE it does not a layer of ANYTHING COULDN'T POSSIBLY REMAIN IN neat horizontal disposition FOR THE HUGE PERIODS OF TIME THE GEO COLUMN MODEL REQUIRES. It doesn't matter if you think this limestone layer was laid down in small increments or all at once. According to the model there is a 20-million-year span compassed by that ONE block of redwall limestone named the "Mississippian" during which ONLY that redwall limestone was laid down, and my point is that there is NO WAY only one kind of deposit like that could have been the only thing laid down in such a huge span of time. The model does not wash.
You are refusing to think about what I'm saying. Go look at the diagram of the Grand Canyon and ask yourself how each of those deposits GOT THERE, considering the TIME SPANS they supposedly mark off. Spend a few hours clearing your mind of your preconceptions about the ages and periods and just try to imagine how those rocks got there given the huge time spans the geo column supposedly describes and the absolutely different kinds of rocks that had to have occurred only during some one long period.
Think think think. You guys are all in thrall to this ludicrous model. You've accepted it because authorities taught it. But it doesn't compute.
Just what model to you think Faith is putting forward and what are you saying actually built up the sediments that the canyon cuts through. qs} As I understand it, the layers that are solidifying - aside from sub-aquatic layers - exist below the general soil till, the stuff that plants live in, that animals burrow through, that water and wind push around, etc.
Faith is determined to argue from a standpoint that no terrestrial sediment layers could form because sediment solidification happens only at the surface, and therefore could never happen in the face of wind and water erosion. Since I don't see anyone who told him that sedimentation happens only at the surface, I don't understand how he came up with the model he's arguing against.
Again, it is the Geo Column that implies that sediment must solidify at the surface, not I. I know it doesn't. Think about the Geo Column itself in relation to the rock formations it supposedly describes. It implies impossibilities.
What are you reading into Faith's statement that I am not?
It's hard to tell, and this has taken me some time because you have to work backwards from his nonsensical objections, but he's clearly referring to some kind of stepwise procedure, like an eternal chef who drops down one layer of the geologic cake all at once, then takes a cigarrette break for 8000 years, and comes back to do the next layer. Faith finds it impossible to believe that nobody's sticking their finger in the icing, so to speak, for all those thousands of years.
Look, just think about what is actually in the wall of the Grand Canyon. Think about the different rocks, in neatly horizontal layers, each one given a name designating HUGE HUGE periods of time during which supposedly they were laid down, and ONLY one kind of rock at a time. YOU explain how just ONE kind of sediment -- before it became rock and had nothing on top of it yet --also, there IS no layer of "general soil" between formations, or over any given formation, beneath which it might have slowly hardene, only this other kind of rock immediately above that couldn't have been there until the millions of years of its own kind of rock had passed -- not because I say so, but because the Geological Column idea says so. It is impossible, it is ludicrous, but that's what it implies. It's in your theory, it's in the rocks and the theory that supposedly explains their ages.
I find it impossible to believe that a grown man/woman thinks deposition happens that way, but hey, whatever.
It doesn't. Again, I am not saying this. It is implied in the ludircous Geological Column idea. LOOK AT THE ROCKS AND TRY TO FIGURE OUT HOW A FEW FEET OF NOTHING BUT REDWALL LIMESTONE COULD HAVE TAKEN TWENTY MILLION YEARS TO LAY ITSELF DOWN IN A NICE HORIZONTAL LAYER!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm not sure what you mean by "not neat".
I mean, they're cracked, they're bent, they're eroded in places, they've undergone post-deposition metamorphoses, etc. We're not talking about a 7-layer geologic lasagna, here, like Faith seems to be. We're talking about a record of stone that bears all the marks of millions or billions of years of a very active planet. Faith has this idea that the geologic layers are not "disturbed", but in fact, many of them are disturbed. That's why geology is so challenging and informative - those disturbances are records of events in Earth's past. They're not so disturbed that they're incoherent, of course.
The disturbances you are talking about are MINUSCULE. What we actually SEE are remarkably neat horizontal layers. Over millions of years of normal disturbances they SHOULD have been rendered incoherent, but they were not. A great part of the beauty and majesty of the Grand Canyon is its intact strata.
Isn't Faith saying that we require that there be consitions allowing for sedimentation that stay in place for millions of years?
Yeah. It's implied in the theory of the geological column itself. If the Mississippian period represents 20 million years of nothing but redwall limestone preceded by a few million years of a different kind of limestone, and succeeded by a few million years of a completely different kind of sediment, you have to explain how it all sat still for those millions of years.
Not to mention having to explain how ONLY one kind was being deposited for such a huge span of time, and why the transition from one to another was so obviously abrupt, which you can tell by looking at the diagram of the canyon wall.
I don't know how long it takes for a silt mass to become sandstone, or whatever, and I wish someone would say. I don't think it takes millions of years, and I don't think the material has to sit out in the open air for it to happen. For some reason Faith thinks it does.
No. I don't think any such thing. Something along those lines is implied by the geological column explanation of the rock formations. It's impossible in my opinion, and the geological column explanation is nonsense. YOU have to explain how it could have taken 20 million years to lay down a layer of redwall limestone.
All his objections are based on the atmosphere preventing the sediment material from staying in any one place long enough to solidify. For some reason he doesn't think that a foot or more of topsoil till, complete with an entire ecosystem trying to hold it in place, is up to the job.
Do you? Up to the job of explaining how ONLY redwall limestone in its presumably unhardened sedimentary condition stayed put for twenty million years until the next kind of limestone sediment came along? And there being no "general soil" between the layers anyway. I don't know if any of this happened in the atmosphere or under water. You have a big problem explaining it either way.
Meanwhile, I don't understand why Faith thinks that such conditions can not stay in place for as long as an ocean does.
I dunno. 20 million years of one kind of sediment only? Followed by another 20 million or so years of another kind? I accept that layers of different sediments form at the bottom of oceans, because you've all said so, but 20 million years of only one kind then millions of a completely different kind, then more millions of yet another kind until you have all the different layers of rocks in the Grand Canyon walls?
I think Faith's argument is two-pronged:
1) "Dry" sedimentation is impossible because nothing on land stays in one place long enough. 2) If all sedimentation is therefore "wet" then a global flood is the better explanation for that.
No, I'm not bringing the Flood into this at all. I'm simply saying YOU ALL have to explain how the geological column can possibly explain anything whatever, given that it assigns enormous ages to the formation of only a few feet of only one kind of deposit which it then changes into rock, under some process you also have to explain, before the completely different formation above it begins the same process over another span of millions of years. You have to explain this because the theory assigns great ages to these formations.
Clearly he has no objection to sedimentation under water. It's the sedimentation on land - the "dry" stuff - that he refuses to believe can happen
I do have an objection to sedimentation under water over 20 million years of only one kind of sediment, say redwall limestone, followed by another span of millions of years of a completely different sediment.
And again, I'm a she.
This message has been edited by Faith, 03-15-2005 12:47 PM
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