Wegener and Evidence for Continental Drift

Hi, TC!Let us conclude the issues already under discussion. You ignored almost all my points, which I briefly recapitulate here. Please see Message 160 for greater detail. And please don't make this part of the discussion take any longer than it already has by only replying to the information in this summary so that I'm forced to repeat it again.

1. Please don't attach my name to your positions.
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2. Your diagrams do not contain relevant data.
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3. The following should be true of mid-ocean sediments:
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   1. The discontinuity in sediment depth would be a sudden one from feet to centimeters as you move closer to the ridge.
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   2. There would be a thin veneer of fine grained sediment atop deep large grained sediment throughout almost all sea floor around the world.
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   But this runs counter to the evidence.
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4. According to your flood scenario, the following would be true of sediments close to continents:
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   1. The deepest sedimentary layers should contain the detritus from runoff from the continents prior to their submergence. There should never be any evidence of sea floor life like clams and crabs and so forth because there was no time for them to inhabit the newly created sea floor. Organic content, other than that flowing off the continent, should be low since the new sea would be largely uninhabited. It should not be surprising to find the remains of many land animals washed off the continent.
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   2. The next higher sedimentary layer should be the result of turbulent water caused by accelerated continental drift and the seismic activity you insist happened. Organic content should be low.
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   3. The next higher sedimentary layer should contain the drainage from continents as they reemerge from the waters.
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   4. The highest sedimentary layer would be a thin layer formed during the past 5000 years since the flood, depth dependent upon local conditions but averaging around 5 cm, and having high organic content.
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   This also runs counter to the evidence.
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5. Wegener had evidence, you have none.
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6. Mammals in the Cambrian *would* be evidence for your position, but no such thing as ever been found. Nor any other such anomalies.

About your geomagnetic diversion, I have only these points:

• The only thing that's correlated is the colors you chose.
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• The correlated color bars on your last two graphs have uncorrelated widths.
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• You don't cite a source for your bathymetric data or even describe whether it's an average or is from a specific places.

--Percy[Fixed message reference in 1st para. --Percy][This message has been edited by Percipient, 07-01-2003]

Yes, I've corrected the reference. Might I suggest that you complete the points under discussion before introducing new points? The messages for the current points are already long.About my complaint that you are citing me as supporting your position, you seem to be forgetting that though *your* oceanic ridge evidence turned out to contain no data for close in to the ridge, mine did not. I cited a figure for the average sedimentation rate in mid-ocean, and described the increased sedimentation rates near active ridges because of warmer waters and therefore more life above. Persist in this mistake if you wish. I gave you advice, which you followed, sort of. Had I instead assured you that something was true and you had accepted my assurance, then you would have been taking my word for something. I'm picking on you for mistakes like this because of the incongruity of someone who incorreclty uses words and phrases he's not familiar with and who can't even keep "linear" and "exponential" straight but tries to argue as if he knows what he's talking about. Uh, TC, as I stated right up front in my message, I was summarizing the points you ignored, not responding to your new point concerning magnetic reversals. This confusion on your part is another reason why it's a good idea to complete current points before introducing new ones, particularly since we're already at saturation. Obviously, the diagrams I was referring to are the same ones you already conceded don't contain data for sedimentation depths close the ridge. Though your geomagnetic argument is new, it is no different from your other arguments. You are still promoting a scenario for which you have no evidence, namely a young earth with its geology created by a recent worldwide flood. And in order to explain how evidence so strongly indicating slow sedimentation rates and an ancient earth is misinterpreted you are invoking imaginary processes for which you also have no evidence. So, no, TC, I see no deceleration.As I asked a message or two ago, why don't you tell us what your evidence for the flood is? In order to justify the violence you're doing to established physics it would have to be pretty mighty evidence. You follow this with a long argument, but it simply ignores the fact that turbulent waters such as those of the flood will produce large-grained sediment. Certainly it wouldn't be *only* large-grained, but large-grained would dominate. After the flood year the sediment should be fine-grained. In other words, the character of sediment deposited during the turbulent flood year should be different than that deposited later in calmer waters.The mid-ocean sediment is all fine-grained. There is no discontinuity from large-grained to fine-grained. There isn't even a gradual transition from large-grained to fine-grained. There is only fine-grained sediment. The evidence indicates there was no turbulent flood. It is the lack of just such evidence that leads Creationists like Wmscott who understand how sedimentation works to advocate a very quiet, slow, peaceful flood that gradually crept up on the continents and then just as quietly receded.You can't ignore the fact that different processes produce different evidence. Had there been a violent flood 5,000 years ago the evidence would indicate it. It doesn't. Well, I guess it all depends upon how ridiculous you're willing to be. You've already got accelerated decay, accelerated continental drift, accelerated cooling and accelerated magnetic reversals. It sounds like you want to add to this accelerated migration, accelerated, mating, accelerated reproduction, accelerated growth, accelerated life spans and accelerated biological decay.At the beginning of the flood year the Atlantic Ocean did not exist. How do you explain fossil clams, which don't migrate all that fast, of a size indicating an age of at least several years in deep sediments off the Atlantic coast that would have come from the beginning of the flood year? Oh, give it a break, TC. This isn't biogeography, this is common sense. The water fell from the sky and welled up from the deep and flowed off the continents and into the oceans in torrents, and it carried everything not nailed down with it, including flora and fauna. Why don't we find them buried in the coastal sediments, TC?So try again, TC. Here's what we should find in coastal sediments. I've corrected the reference to the mid-ocean sedimentation rate, and I've added a couple additional details:

1. The deepest sedimentary layers should contain the detritus from runoff from the continents prior to their submergence. There should never be any evidence of sea floor life like clams and crabs and so forth because there was no time for them to inhabit the newly created sea floor. Organic content, other than that flowing off the continent, should be low since the new sea would be largely uninhabited. It should not be surprising to find the remains of many land animals washed off the continent.
   ​
2. The next higher sedimentary layer should be the result of turbulent water caused by accelerated continental drift and the seismic activity you insist happened. Organic content should be low.
   ​
3. The next higher sedimentary layer should contain the drainage from continents as they reemerge from the waters. Organic content should again be low.
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4. The highest sedimentary layer would be a thin layer formed during the past 5000 years since the flood, depth dependent upon local conditions and having high organic content. The top layer should reflect increasing migration of life into the newly formed coastal regions.

Moving on: First, asking for evidence of what is common knowledge is just a stonewalling tactic, TC. You bought all those geology books, just look it up. Besides, had we found what I described in those four points above we would all be Creationists - the evidence would require it.Second, you're taking two different tacks. First you dispute each of my four points, and now you defend them by asking me to provide contrary evidence. Pick just one approach, okay? Good grief, TC, we settled this already, don't you remember? You're slipping back into previous misunderstandings again. Evidence of continental drift is *not* evidence of PT or CPT. Wegener wasn't gathering evidence for PT, he was gathering evidence for continental drift, of which he had a lot. You should be gathering evidence for the flood and for accelerated physical processes. So far you have none.By the way, would it be possible for you to please stop using the word "uniformitarian". It's a popular Creationist attempt to mischaracterize modern geology, as in, "Modern geology is uniformitarian and does not accept the possibility of sudden catastrophes. Obviously modern geology is wrong since the world experiences earthquakes, volcanoes, fires and floods all the time." Sorry, TC, it still reads like science fiction hash. Well, TC, if you agree that mammals in the Cambrian *would* be evidence for your position, and since there are no mammals in the Cambrian, then guess what? You still have no evidence!--Percy[Fixed grammatical errors. --Percy][This message has been edited by Percipient, 07-01-2003]

Hi, TC!I'm afraid this is just getting to be too much work. I feel like I'm talking to my cleaning lady, who mostly speaks Portuguese: So I give up.I'm beginning to feel the same way about you. It just takes too much work. If there's a way to fail to comprehend a point you can be trusted to find it.The only reason my posts grew more lengthy and detailed was that I was operating under the delusion that you only a needed a little more explanation and information. But just getting you to understand an explanation (not agree with it, mind you, just understand it) is like having a conversation with some kind of bizarro character.The important point that the detail was intended to get across is my original one, namely that different kinds of events leave different evidence. If there was a worldwide flood just a geological instant ago, there'd be evidence. And it would be different evidence than if there had never been any such flood. You're making the ridiculous argument that flood or not, the world would look just as it does today, and that there is therefore no evidence that would allow us to tell the difference.You also seem to be operating under the strange belief that there's some kind of weird disconnect between the information in geology textbooks and the kind of hard data one might find in technical journals, and that therefore if the original data is unavailable (as it will inevitably be, since few of us are subscribers to these journals) you're free to ignore the textbooks and draw whatever conclusions you like.Of course, I have no doubt these arguments will again be ignored or misconstrued, but at least they were short and so I haven't wasted much time.--Percy

Or maybe it's that you really don't understand it. I offer your inability to comprehend the simple point that your views differ from Wegener's in that his had evidence and yours don't. You will again explain that CPT is compatible with Wegener's evidence for continental drift, thereby demonstrating once again your inability to comprehend simple points. And those differences would be?I won't hold my breath waiting for an answer. I assume this means you've uncovered evidence driving your inquiry into why the textbook says what it does? And this evidence would be?I won't hold my breath waiting for an answer.I really hate seeing a nice kid like you wasting his time doing pseudoscience. Science involves evidence. Your speculations about a one-year acceleration of natural processes 5000 years ago are driven not by evidence but by Genesis. You must first find the evidence and only then build theories around it. While studiously *not* seeking evidence you're building theories that as much as possible are constructed to hide from evidence.--Percy