Summations Only

So let's talk about ordinary wooden blocks, simple cubes with no little nubbin holes. What prevents me from stacking and restacking the blocks ad infinitum? How do the blocks even know whether they're being stacked on the "original" layer? And why would they care?

Yes indeed, they will. It's called "erosion". That's how the surfaces get flat if they weren't initially deposited flat.So, since you agree that I can deposit more blocks on top of the Block Column, what's your idea about the geological column "stopping"? The grains that make it up are just smaller versions of my blocks.

So you have no intlligent response?What's the difference? If I can put a block on top of the pile - even if it slips to a new location - why can't natural forces put a grain of sand on top of the pile - even if it slips to a new location?

Well, they're pictures of distortions, so that's not surprising - nor is it surprising that it's difficult to interpret those distortions as flat.

What about lava or volcanic ash?

Well, a Greek column that falls down is still the same column; it's just lying horizontally.You're taking the word "column" to literally. The "geological column" just means a cross-section of the layers at any point. Some layers are wider than others - some cover whole states, others are just a hole filled with sediment. Some layers get bent or cracked. Some get tipped on their sides like a Greek column. Some are partially or completely eroded away.Wherever you look you'll get a different cross-section.

Suppose there's a flood that leaves layers of sediment. Then lava flows down and covers the sediment. Later, another flood deposits more sediment on top of the lava. The lava is a continous layer, part of which is horizontal and part of which is not.Edited by zombie ringo, : "The" --> "Then".Edited by zombie ringo, : Punctuation%

So some layers aren't layers? How do you tell which layers are layers?

According to Faith, some layers are not layers.I would add that some floods are not floods; they're fiction.