Attention Faith: Geological data and the Flood

Hey all,In my usual lurker mode, I've been reading through the thread "Have any Biblical literalists been to the American Southwest?" and noting in particular Faith's posts on geology.Well, as a geologist, I find Flood hypotheses fascinating. So, I would like to present Faith with a golden opportunity to begin the long process of verification that a hypothesis must undergo to become a theory; starting of course, with raw data. (A hypothesis is formed; data is collected regarding it; the data is examined based on the predictions of the hypothesis; the hypothesis is modified or rejected as a result.)Geology cannot be conducted from photos or the like - it starts with fieldwork, period. So, I am offering Faith my own field research, taken from an area in the west of Ireland called Ballyferriter. I have the geological maps I compiled myself, as well as my own descriptions of every rock formation, fault, and other features. I also have digital photos and diagrams for illustration if needed.Now, I obviously drew my own conclusions when I did this research - and yes, they were in line with conventional geology. But I am not doing so here; I will merely provide the field evidence I collected, and Faith can argue the Flood hypothesis using it. I will, of course, be explaining as much as possible in laymen's terms for non-geologists. This is crucial - regardless of the scale of the proposed Flood event, if it is unworkable on the most basic level of geology then it will have failed.Discussion of areas other than Ballyferriter are outside the scope of this thread, and I ask that they not be introduced. I also ask that AT MOST 3 evolutionist and 3 creationist posters be involved besides myself and Faith, to avoid the thread becoming swamped.My role here is to provide the necessary information to anyone who asks it - I will not be involved in the debate myself. If there are no objections, I will also use my Admin mode to keep the thread on topic and civil. (By "civil", I mean that derogatory comments will not be tolerated.)So, if one of the other admins will promote this and Faith is willing to join the thread, we can get started and I will post a brief summary of the geology of Ballyferriter.The Rock HoundThis message has been edited by AdminJar, 09-11-2005 07:15 PM

Much as I'd like to get started straight away, it's 2:15 in the morning here and I need to get to bed.If I don't respond all that fast, just remember there's a massive time difference between Ireland and the US. I'll check back in the morning and see how people feel about this topic.'NightThe Rock Hound

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"Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do."

Well, let's see...

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I won't accept the idea of the Flood as a "hypothesis" so that needs to be taken out of the title and everywhere else.

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I used the term 'hypothesis' out of a lack of anything else to use. If you prefer a different term, then please suggest one - I'll change the thread title immediately.I've already stated I will only allow a few posters to get involved here. I would also ask that any posters that have had problems debating with Faith previously to stay out of this.

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This is crucial - regardless of the scale of the proposed Flood event, if it is unworkable on the most basic level of geology then it will have failed.

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If that is indeed crucial, all bets are off.

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I apologise; I should have put this in context. I accept that for you, and other YEC's, the Flood is a given due to your literal reading of Genesis. I did not wish to imply otherwise for you in particular. However, it is crucial in the conext of convincing others of your ideas and claims. I simply assumed that this was part of your purpose in posting here, as it seems to be for every poster that comes to EvCForum.I merely wish to give you the opportunity to develop your ideas using actual geological data. I am not asking anything of you with regards to science or the Bible. What you do with it, and what discussion follows as a result, will be out of my hands. My only conditions on the debate is that it remains on topic and civil, and I will be using my Admin mode to enforce these.The tone of your post is very defensive; there's no need for that here. I want to give you a fair chance above all else to try to develop your ideas without being hit over the head with conventional geology at every turn.The Rock Hound

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"Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do."

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If the Flood is not a hypothesis, but a given, then it cannot be rejected as a result of the data. Ideas about how it occurred, as I have said, can be modified or rejected, but the Flood description as given in Genesis cannot be. I don't think any actual DATA could possibly falsify it anyway. It is only the conventional geological interpretations or explanations of the data that ever falsify it. But I am saying this because I want it to be clear that *rejecting* the Flood is not a possibility, and that when at some point I will not reject it no matter how the conversation goes, I expect that that position will be understood and respected and that nobody is going to start berating me for not being scientific.

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As you wish. It will not be my concern once the thread starts. I will not be participating except as an information provider.However, if the point you mention is reached, I as an Admin can act to prevent such berating. It essentially comes under the heading of off-topic discussion.

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The problem is that people often encounter a thread after it has gone for a few pages, don't read it from the beginning but only the last few posts, and figure it's fair game. Simply stating your intention at the beginning won't prevent that. This is why I suggested putting something in the title to make it clear that the number of participants is to be limited. I'm not sure how that might be worded, though. Maybe it isn't all that crucial, however, as long as we know it will happen. I suppose people can be told at the point they enter the thread.

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I intend to watch for the number of participants, and instruct any extra posters to refrain from commenting further if it seems there are enough to adequately cover all points. Simple enough. I will be posting reminders as well as the thread continues.

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The problem is that this sounds too good to be true. I'm amazed, frankly, that my post here didn't get me summarily suspended, certainly from this Science forum thread, as that is what has happened every time I have dared to say anything along these lines, and although you are being quite accommodating, I am certain that other admins, NosyNed in particular, are agonizingly sure that giving me so much room is contrary to the entire purpose of EvC.

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The purpose of EvC, as far as I am concerned, is constructive debate concerning evolutionism-creationism. Giving you this room will encourage a constructive debate, which I thought was rather lacking in the other thread. As always the choice is yours whether or not to participate.Take your time in deciding, I will be participating slowly myself. I have other concerns that take up a large chunk of my time.The Rock Hound{edited out of admin mode}This message has been edited by IrishRockhound, 09-11-2005 01:58 PM

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"Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do."

I'm going to begin with an overall summary, and if I can figure out how, some photos of the area. Feel free to ask me specific questions regarding particular formations, rock types or terms.Ballyferriter is situated in the northwest Dingle penninsula in County Kerry. The topography conists mostly of wide sandy beaches in the east and rocky beaches with high cliffs to the west. The best outcrops are along the coastline, as outcrops inland are sparce and not altogether useful.To the east, the Wine Strand area is dominated by red conglomerates and sandstones. These form a large open syncline which becomes faulted to the west. The headland area to the north, called Sybil Head, is formed from tough sandstones and conglomerates, which is both faulted and unconformable against the Wine Strand lithology. To the west, Ferriter's Cove is composed of grey, yellow and green siltstones, all with a very high percentage of fossils. These are also faulted and unconformable against the Sybil Head lithology, and at the fault itself a dark grey shale is found. Further south and west from Feritter's Cove, Clogher Bay is composed of soft green mudstone which continues south into Clogher Head, and forms another smaller syncline with thick volcanic ash beds on the outside, and a red conglomerate lying unconformably in the core.The faults in this area are extensive and numerous. A large fault and unconformity run west-east across Sybil Head. A second fault runs south-west through Ferriter's cove and offsets the siltstone beds. Another forked fault crosses the siltstone lithology again further south between Ferriter's Cove and Clogher Bay. Clogher Head is broken by two faults which offset the core of the syncline.The rock layers are overturned to the north of the Sybil Head unconformity, and in the core of the Clogher Head syncline. The angle at which they are tilting is on average 50 degrees, and the dip direction is generally to the south east.The fossils found are Chondrites - in great abundance in Clogher Bay - and brachiopods found all over the siltstone and mudstone beds.(Chondrites is a trace fossil similar to worm tracks.)I can't post the geological map I created, seeing as its 5 feet square and resizing it removes all the pertinent detail. I'll try to take smaller sections of it and post them later.The Rock Hound

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"Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do."

I will not be participating in the discussion.The problem with maps and diagrams is that I have nowhere online to host them. Otherwise, I could show you the full 5ft x 5ft geological map I compiled as well as dozens of photos of the area.I'll look into getting somewhere to host them.Until then, please ask me any questions you like regarding the areas I mentioned - pick an area at random if you like, and I will describe the formations and features.The Rock Hound

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Are the red conglomerates, red, due to iron or something else?

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They are red due to iron oxidation, yes.

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What particle size are the sandstones? I recently went through a class lab describing igneous, metamorphic, and sediment types. Particle size iirc was an indication of deposition environment.

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The particle size of the Wine Strand rock varied a good deal. The formation consists of conglomerates at the base, which becameinterbedded with sandstones further up, and gradually the beds developed into siltstone and finally mudstone. Wide ripple marks were also found on the top of one of the conglomerates.

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What do you mean by 'tough' sandstone? Larger particle size?

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I need to clarify here - I refer to the Sybil Head formation overall as tough because it has eroded far less than the other sandstone formations in the area. Force of habit; I apologise.

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When you say 'unconformable', do you mean that there is an unconformity between the two rock types described?

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Well, yes. Maybe it's an expression just used by Irish geologists?

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Sybil head is described as being faulted. What kind of fault is it? Transform, etc.?

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That particular fault is a reverse fault. Others in the area are reverse, transform, or a combination of the two.

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I'll have to review my notes on what causes the different colorations of the siltstones (if we have gotten that far). What is their stratigraphy? grey below yellow below green?

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Actually it's "grey below green below yellow", if you want to put it like that. It's an indication of iron oxidation in the rock. Grey or black points to deep water anoxic conditions, yellow or green points to shallow water or coastal conditions, red points to terrestrial conditions.As an explanation, Faith - the iron minerals in a rock will oxidise or "rust" in terrestrial conditions, hence deserts tend to be reddish. So the colour of the rock is a broad indication of how much contact it's had with the air.

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Has the ash been analyzed? Do we have an approximate location for the origin or other information from the chemical composition?

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The ash beds at Clogher Head are composed of pyroclastics and lithic tuffs, interbedded with thin sandstones, siltstones and conglomerates. I managed to get a reasonable thin section of one of the lithic tuffs - it consists of angular, poorly sorted mafic and oxide clasts in a devitrified groundmass, along with altered white mica and chlorite crystallised in cracks and around the clasts.It's been suggested that these beds came at the end of a volcanic eruption or a series of volcanic eruptions.The Rock Hound{edited to fix quote box}This message has been edited by IrishRockhound, 09-13-2005 06:28 PM

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"Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do."

I've signed up to Photobucket to show everyone my photos. I'll need a while to dig out my stratigraphy disgrams and whatever, but I'll throw them up there too. This is the view from the top of Clogher Head looking out towards Sybil Head in the distance. The bay in the middle distance is Ferriter's Cove, and the smaller bay on the right that you can't really see is Clogher Bay. This is the view looking across Clogher Head and into Clogher Bay.{added by edit} I don't know how to resize the pictures. This message has been edited by IrishRockhound, 09-13-2005 06:45 PMThis message has been edited by AdminJar, 09-13-2005 03:38 PM

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"Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do."

This, Jazzns, was precisely the kind of thing I was trying to avoid. If you look at the original post, I wanted to provide Faith a chance to work out her ideas from raw data without having conventional geology waved in her face. Up to this point, I had never encountered a YEC even willing to try!I fully realised that including conventional geology in this thread would get us nowhere. I am very disappointed in the evolutionists here who have wilfully hijacked this thread just for the chance to jump on another YEC for having notions contrary to conventional wisdom, which was very much against my original intention. It certainly makes me question the self-control of the evolutionists on this forum.
The Rock Hound

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"Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do."

We may get some interesting topics out of this thread, but it itself probably needs to be closed. It is too far off topic.

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YECs are in the business of answering evolutionism. They may be scientists but their aim is to come up with alternative explanations of the phenomena that at present are used to support evolutionism and OE theory. I can look at a landscape and "see" the Flood, and to some extent -- nothing near what a scientist could do of course -- I can postulate some alternative explanations when I know how the evolutionist/OE explanation goes in a particular case.

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But not being a geologist I can't approach a bare landscape with its variety of features from rocks to fossils to flora and fauna and construct any kind of hypothesis from it. And this isn't what YECs do, at least nonscientist YECs who like to exercise our minds on coming up with alternatives to evo explanations or interpretations of given data or phenomena.

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I am sorry to say, Faith, that I have yet to see any YEC take raw geological data and construct a hypothesis, scientist or otherwise. I have yet to even meet a YEC geologist, seeing as creationism is unheard in Ireland.Perhaps you don't realise what you could do here. The very foundation of old earth geology is the raw data compiled over the last 200 years. It discredited creationism years before Darwin ever wrote Origin of the Species. Knocking away this pillar would effectively destroy conventional geology and make evolution largely unworkable, and yet, no YEC seems to have caught on so far, and they continue to hack away at the theories developed from the data.Exercise your mind all you want, but the crux of the debate always revolves around convincing others of your ideas. Reinterpreting the old earth theories hasn't worked especially well for years; perhaps it's time to try a different tactic?In fact, I would like to develop this further. I will start a new thread for it, and I hope to see you there.Thank you for your effort in this one.The Rock Hound

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"Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do."