Re: A Picture Book For Faith. See Spot Run. Run Spot, Run.
edge writes:
There may be some chronological equivalents, but there are no great ergs in almost any direction.
Could we draw a parallel between the Najavo Sandstone and today's sandhills in Nebraska as an example of geology in action. Not too long ago the Nebraska Sandhills were a living erg but now there are grasses growing which may preserve the underlying formations so they someday become sandstone?
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
Re: Ah yes, Rationalization is a Wonderful Scientific Tool
No, what Faith says is that there is no" erosion" within the geologic column that deserves to be compared with the massive erosion of the surface we now live on, ...
Faith, what evidence do you have for this? How would you know, by looking only at the surface, whether or not there is similar erosion in earlier strata which have been covered up?
We can look at the earlier strata through 3-D seismic imaging. If we do this, we find similar evidence of erosion to what we see at the surface. For example, we can see buried river channels which were cut into these layers when they were exposed. How do you explain such buried river channels from a YEC perspective?
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein
I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schroedinger
Re: Ah yes, Rationalization is a Wonderful Scientific Tool
I don't know it from looking at the surface, I know it from all the cross sections that have been discussed here.
I don't accept that the seismic images show formerly surface features, but rather features that developed underground.
There is so much evidence that the strata deposited continuously over a short period of time such very occasional internal features could not have been on the surface long enough to explain their dimensions.
Re: A Picture Book For Faith. See Spot Run. Run Spot, Run.
Could we draw a parallel between the Najavo Sandstone and today's sandhills in Nebraska as an example of geology in action. Not too long ago the Nebraska Sandhills were a living erg but now there are grasses growing which may preserve the underlying formations so they someday become sandstone?
Certainly could. They are different ages, of course. I'm not sure about how large or thick the sand hills are, but if they don't erode away, they will form a desert sand deposit in the current geological record.
Or if Faith is correct, the geological record is dead and nothing will change, ever...
Re: A Picture Book For Faith. See Spot Run. Run Spot, Run.
Is there an answer to my question about how thick shale layers great in extent form?
They typically form in basins or on wide continental platforms that are inundated for extended periods. The Manco Shale is one of the large ones that I am familiar with and it formed on the bottom of the Cretaceous seaway in central North America over a period of about 15 million years.
Here is a stratigraphic correlation chart for the Mancos.
What it shows is the Mancos Shale, and its equivalent, the Pierre Shale, in gray, do not extend to the west where the Laramide mountain building event was occurring. In yellow, 'tongues' of sand stone such as the Dakota up to the Fox Hills extend from source areas in the highlands to the west, eastward into the Mancos basin. These represent times of marine regression as sea levels fluctuated during the time of the seaway.
Just for fun, here is a cross section of the Denver Basin sequence which is underlain by the Pierre Shale.
AFAIK, the Pierre is eroded away east of the Dakotas.
Not sure if this answers you question, but these are truly important geological features of the planet.
There is so much evidence that the strata deposited continuously over a short period of time such very occasional internal features could not have been on the surface long enough to explain their dimensions.
Of course. True things can't be true if they contradict your beliefs. If only geologists knew that, then they too would attribute the geological record to the magical activities of a malevolent invisible loony who lives in the sky, like sensible people do.
A total draft first attempt at a video put together for a family member who is trying to understand dating methods. It's not public on YouTube nor will this one ever be.
I'm putting together three of these for her -- meant to be in the order of how the age of the earth was figured out. First through relative dating (this video) then later through the observation of geologic processes such as deposition and erosion (next video) and then finally through RM dating (final video).
Just posting it up to show what I've been up to (and to say thanks to the many who have been helping educate me). I truly don't expect folk to sit through a 30 minute vid of such basics.
Here is what I emailed her with the video:
quote:Besides the nonsensical and just plain made up circular dating system that Doug Batchelor presents, there are two sorts of dating systems you will hear about — real ones... relative and absolute Sometimes the term numerical dating will be used instead of absolute dating and I prefer it because people get too confused by the term absolute and it's usage in science. People tend to think that when science refers to absolute dating, it is insisting it's "absolutely right" or "exactly perfect" — that's not how it's being used. Rather absolute in this case means it's referenced to a number (along with its inherent experimental error) rather than referenced to another object. Let me explain:
If I say a Honda Civic costs $23,000 and a Ferrari costs $230,000, I have used an absolute system to express that pricing (you can call the associated rebates, taxes, licenses, etc. the 'error rates' if you like). If I merely state that the Ferrari costs more than the Civic, I have used a relative system to express that pricing. In other words, in the second case I have stated the value of the Ferrari RELATIVE to the Honda. I could even state that the Honda costs $207,000 less than the Ferrari or that the Ferrari costs 10 times the Honda and I would still be using a relative pricing system overall.
Similarly, if I tell you that the trilobite fossil is around 500 millions years old and the dinosaur tooth fossil is around 100 million years old, those are absolute dates. If I merely tell you that the trilobite is much older than the dinosaur, that would be expressed using a relative scheme.
Later in the series we'll get into how science has developed absolute dating methods for rock layers and fossils, but for now I'm only going to focus on the older (but still just as valid) 'geological sequencing' or 'geologic succession' method of relative dating. As we learned in the last installment, consilience from completely different lines of evidence are a powerful way to confirm and strengthen a conclusions. Since absolute and relative dating methods are based on completely independent principles, the fact that they agree is strong evidence for the validity of each.
The principles of relative geological dating were developed (or at least formalized) beginning in the 17th century by the early geologists such as Nicholas Steno. The stratigraphic scheme is based on simple, logical, easy to understand geological principles that are for the most part observable and have easily stood the test of investigation, confirmation and time. The relative dating of fossils, or biostratigraphy is based substantively on those same principles with additions developed by William Smith in the 1800s (read the excellent book The Map that Changed the World to learn of Smith's work).
When biostratigraphy arrived on the scientific scene, the addition of the added and independent biological principles of faunal succession to the established principles of geological succession strengthened both disciplines through the consilience of the evidence. Through methods we will explore in future installments (such as the Index Fossils so undeservedly mocked by Batchelor), geologists were able to put a much finer point on their knowledge of geological history. The understanding of biological history of course benefited as well in a time a full generation before Darwin and Wallace would put forth their independently conceived Theory of Evolution (ToE).
But enough with history for now, let's get on with some basic geological principles of stratigraphy.
I've put together a short (as possible) video. It's not possible to squeeze a freshman geology course into a 30 minute video (if they could, they would), but it's also not possible to understand geology based dating systems without putting in a bit of time and learning effort. If you want to understand how reliable the radiometric dating systems are (we will deal with them in a later installment), you have to start with the basics of geology — there's just no shortcut.
I've included some images that came from Google image searches using terms such as road cut geology etc. (you can find many more interesting images through your own searches). I also included a few diagrams and animations from a Mr. Sammartano, a science teacher at Hommocks Middle School in Larchmont, New York. This guy does some great public domain work on science topics all around (look him up on the web).
If you slogged through that, congrats. In order to squeeze that much material into such a short video, compromises and generalizations were made — but I did my best to note when they occurred. When we get to the validity of radiometric dating we will be coming back to these simple relative dating methods to test how well the other methods work.
Questions, and comments are welcome and if I don't have an answer straight up I know where to get it for you.
While SO may people contributed and continue to contribute to my knowledge regarding the basics of geology, I want to especially thank Dr. Adequate and Edge for their patience and sharing. The online ebook from Dr. Adequate was a particularly valuable resource.
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