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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1473 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: The Geological Timescale is Fiction whose only reality is stacks of rock | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Admin Director Posts: 13042 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
Faith replied twice to Stile's Message 957. Here are issues stemming from Faith's responses in Message 964.
There was more in Faith's message, but I will stop here.
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edge Member (Idle past 1735 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined:
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Remember, a stratigraphic column is one extensive flat rock on top of another. At the same geographic location. No. A strat column includes all layered rock at a given location. I fail to see how you are saying anything different than I just said. At some point you have creatures moving elsewhere. But remember, their fossils are in a particular rock at this particular geographic location.
An environment for each creature has always existed. Just look at the modern distribution of shorelines, swamps, deserts, mountain ranges, etc. Remember Walther's Law?
You are postulating environments that are NOT shown in the rock in the column. You don't know if they existed or not. The rock is a huge flat slab. Where did those environments exist?
As I have said many times: local basins, such as swamps, lakes, sand bars, sand dunes, etc. can be preserved in the geological record (and often are). They can be preserved by later burial, even though they were originally deposited above sea level. Do you deny that swamps are recorded in the geological record?
The fossils of the creatures that lose their habitat are found in a particulat rock in the strat column.
If the habitat is lost, then it is lost to the geological record and only the terrain remains. However, as I've said many times before, there are some locations where that environment is preserved. So, the habitat was never really lost, though it was destroyed in many places.
If they move somewhere else would their fossils show up somewhere else?
Yes, unless they became extinct or evolved into other species.
But how could that be? They are in that particular rock that points to their habitat that no longer exists.
Except that is does exist in some places. As I've stated many times, the only reason we have dinosaur fossils is that they were preserved in swamps, sand dunes and river sand bars. We have the footprints to prove it.
This is one of the main problems with this idea that the creatures can just move elsewhere.
Think of Walther's Law. As the environment moves across the contient as sea level rises, the environments move along with the shoreline.
They have to stay in their own environment and their own time period because that's the only evidence we have of them and they certainly can't show up somewhere else in the rock record.
A species living in a swamp that is filling with sand will end up in another swamp in a thousand years. Your problem is not a problem.
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edge Member (Idle past 1735 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined:
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This is common. However, even where the habitat is destroyed, there are places where it is preserved (as I have said many times) in such places as lake sediments, river sediments, coal seams and sand dunes. This is also common, and that is why we have dinosaur fossils and sequoia fossils, etc.
I have a problem when you speak in the present tense like this since I'm focused on what would have happened during the supposed time when a particular environment existed as determined from the contents of a orck in a stratigraphic column. What is common now may not apply to then.
If you have a better explanation of the rock types this would be a good time to present them.
" ...places where it IS preserved" doesn't tell me if anything like this happened then.
Okay so how do you interpret a geological section that has an enclosed basin with water in it?
All I'm going on is one habitat as indicated in one rock in a stratigraphic column. If that is destroyed what's the evidence that there are:
Why not? How can you say this? Have you actually mapped the geology of any location?
The only evidence from the strat column is the one habitat. There isn't evidence in that rock of those other environments, lake sediments, river sediments etc etc etc. {But also, how do sediments, coal seams and sand dunes provide a place where a habitat is "preserved"? For some kinds of insects maybe...}
Because they become protected from erosion by overlying material.
But the main question still is What's the evidence there is any such alternative habitat aviailable at all given that the only clue to any habitat is in one rock in a strat column?
In the real world, there is a lot more to go on than just a stratigraphic column. Plus we know something about swamps, sand dunes, etc.
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edge Member (Idle past 1735 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined: |
Again, this seems to say that a landscape can only be an area of net erosion.
I think that I have said plenty of times that net erosion is a generalization and that there some depositional environments can be preserved. Once again, I will repeat some of them: lake sediments, swamp sediments, river sediments and the occasional paleosoil.
How can a landscape form if it's always an area of net erosion?
Because plants can stabilize a terrain and slopes may go to horizontal (that would mean no movement toward a stream). Erosion may slow and even go negative, but it's still an areal of net erosion over time.
I've got a hundred feet of soil beneath my house. How did it get there if at all stages up to the present it was an area of net erosion?
The formation of soil is one part of erosion. If you were around long enough and the sea rose or a river encroached on your house, the soil would eventually disappear.
I wanted to clarify this part:
Well, it could be bedrock, but in this case, we are talking soil. No. The environment is not that of the existing rock. It resides on top of the rock as a land surface.
When you say that the environment "resides on top of the rock as a land surface" you mean that a landscape of soil (or sand or whatever) of some depth exists on top of the rock. The top surface of the environment or landscape is not rock, at least not in most places. What ever lives in and on this soil is not OF the bedrock, nor is it OF whatever comes along later (a beach sand, a mudflow, a volcanic flow, etc.).
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Admin Director Posts: 13042 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
edge writes: The habitat is lost in one place but gained in another. Remember Walther's Law? I think Faith is missing the time element. Even though she's trying to gain a feel for what geology says (not accept what it says), I think she often doesn't incorporate the time element into her thinking. In the case of a transgressing sea, when a habitat is described as being lost Faith appears to think it means at a rate that would affect organisms during their lifetimes, forcing them to pick up and move great distances And Faith thinks of Walther's Law in terms of a flood moving across a landscape in days or weeks, sorting material it picks up and redepositing it in distinct layers. She doesn't think of a beach moving inland at maybe a foot per century and gradually leaving behind a characteristic sequence of sand/shale/limestone layers. She doesn't believe geological processes are still laying down strata in the manner observed in the geological record.
The fossils of the creatures that lose their habitat are found in a particulat rock in the strat column. If the habitat is lost, then it is lost to the geological record and only the terrain remains. However, as I've said many times before, there are some locations where that environment is preserved. So, the habitat was never really lost, though it was destroyed in many places. I found this very confusing, and you may be addressing a different point than the one Faith raised - not sure. I'm aware of several things you may be saying but can't sort it out myself.
They have to stay in their own environment and their own time period because that's the only evidence we have of them and they certainly can't show up somewhere else in the rock record. A species living in a swamp that is filling with sand will end up in another swamp in a thousand years. I think Faith meant that she thinks geology's views require fossils to show up in the geologic record in places other than where they lived. It needs to be understood why she believes geology thinks this.
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edge Member (Idle past 1735 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined: |
When Faith calls destruction of a landscape that renders it uninhabitable "part of the puzzle" I don't think she's referring to marine transgression/regression.
I don't either, but when she talks about continental scale, flat sheets, she almost has to be talking about marine sediments.
She understands that a sea moving across the land destroys terrestrial habitats, and that a sea retreating from land destroys marine habitats.
The key thing is that the habitats are destroyed, the bedrock topography is not.
The "puzzle" part is how a landscape can remain habitable while at the same time becoming buried.
Because it's not being buried everywhere.
I continue to push my example of a landscape of net deposition that gradually rises in elevation (maybe a foot or two per century) while continuously providing a habitat where life flourishes for millennia and preserving a record of all that time.
Sure. It happens. Over the observation scale of human civilization, soils can accumulate to great depth from both the top and the bottom of the profile.
Again, I realize such landscapes aren't often preserved, but this scenario seems to me to have the greatest potential for ferreting out Faith's precise objection. This will probably sow more confusion, as usual, but here is an example of a depositional environment that, when conditions changed, became erosional.
The flat alluvial plain in the center of the photograph formed by deposition above sea level in a mountain valley by the accumulation of coarse-grained materials. It was once flat and filled the valley. However, due to uplift of the Uncompahgre Plateau it is now being eroded by the same streams that formed it, and it will slowly, over a long period of time, erode away.
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edge Member (Idle past 1735 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined: |
I think Faith is missing the time element. Even though she's trying to gain a feel for what geology says (not accept what it says), I think she often doesn't incorporate the time element into her thinking. In the case of a transgressing sea, when a habitat is described as being lost Faith appears to think it means at a rate that would affect organisms during their lifetimes, forcing them to pick up and move great distances
This is my impression.
The fossils of the creatures that lose their habitat are found in a particulat rock in the strat column.
If the habitat is lost, then it is lost to the geological record and only the terrain remains. However, as I've said many times before, there are some locations where that environment is preserved. So, the habitat was never really lost, though it was destroyed in many places. And if they are in a location where their habitat is preserved, we will find fossils of them. If not then the fossils will be washed away.
I think Faith meant that she thinks geology's views require fossils to show up in the geologic record in places other than where they lived.
That is also my impression. But no, they are either destroyed or preserved locally by erosion or burial in protected basins.
It needs to be understood why she believes geology thinks this.
I've been trying to figure that out for weeks.
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Tanypteryx Member Posts: 4451 From: Oregon, USA Joined: Member Rating: 5.0
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It needs to be understood why she believes geology thinks this.
I've been trying to figure that out for weeks. As this discussion has proceeded I have been amazed by the things that Faith seems to think that geologists think. And when I read the explanations of how the processes actually work that are posted to correct her misunderstandings I am blown away that she doesn't get it.
I think Faith meant that she thinks geology's views require fossils to show up in the geologic record in places other than where they lived.
That is also my impression. But no, they are either destroyed or preserved locally by erosion or burial in protected basins. All through this discussion I keep thinking about the changes that I observed over many years at a pond where I studied dragonflies. I remember the first year that it totally dried up. In two days it went from having a couple inches of water in the relatively flat bottom to being drying mud. Thousands of fish were suddenly exposed and flopping around as they slowly suffocated. The sound was quite loud and disturbing. Dozens of herons and egrets showed up and feasted for several days but they really couldn't put a dent in them. Within a few days the mud-caked fish were desiccated corpses that barely smelled. Sedges rapidly grew and hid the remains and when the Fall rains refilled the pond the sedges formed a mat that completely covered the dead fish. I assume that all sorts of organisms fed on the soft remains and maybe some of the bones. By the next Spring there was a layer of soft mud covering the remains and the sedges started growing earlier. Several years later The pond dried up again and I went out on the cracked mud flats to get some buckets of the dried mud to use in some pond aquariums that I was rearing dragonfly nymphs in. I kept finding perfectly preserved fish skeletons that reminded me of some of the fish fossils I have seen in museums. I remember thinking that in a million years these fish might be fossilized. Sadly, my wonderful pond is now under a Walmart superstore. One positive side note, I found some dried up dragonfly nymphs in the dry, caked mud. They were so dry that that they floated when I put them in a bucket of water. After a couple hours, I looked in the bucket and they had disappeared. When I looked closer I realized that they were at the bottom and that they were alive. It turned out that I had discovered that dragonfly nymphs were drought resistant and subsequent research showed that many species have this ability.What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1473 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I would think I'd said it enough times by now that this isn't about what I think Geologists think. Good grief.
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Tanypteryx Member Posts: 4451 From: Oregon, USA Joined: Member Rating: 5.0
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I would think I'd said it enough times by now that this isn't about what I think Geologists think. Good grief. Well, I can't figure out what you think or what your point is. The processes of geology, deposition, erosion, fossilization are so obvious and easy to understand that it is hard to believe that you really don't get it after all these discussions. I think that the gibberish of your "puzzle" and the rest of the stuff you have posted in this thread is a total con job. Good grief indeed.What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1473 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Meant that to be a General Reply. Oh well.
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edge Member (Idle past 1735 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined:
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I would think I'd said it enough times by now that this isn't about what I think Geologists think. Good grief.
Then you shouldn't be telling us all of the things that geologists have wrong. Especially when they are not true.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1473 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Then you shouldn't be telling us all of the things that geologists have wrong. No debate then I guess, creationists just go away, right?
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1473 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Hi Faith, you seem to have many issues with the scenario I explained. That's okay, we can get to them all eventually (I read your second post as well). I got a bit overwhelmed by all the detail in your post so I'm sure I didn't do it justice. I've been avoiding trying to cover too much territory myself, so I stick to some small part of the scenario, so as not to overwhelm anybody -- maybe mostly myself. But anyway I'll try to get through it all.
ust wanted to say again that I'm not a geologist. That may make communication easier, since the geologists can't help thinking along lines a creationist doesn't think along.
I think the first issue you brought up is a very important one, and will lead into many of your other issues. I'd like to focus on that until we can come to an agreement, if possible.
Faith writes: First of all if it takes 100 years to bury something an inch deep, by that time any creature would have been decomposed completely, utterly disintegrated, never having a chance to get fossilized at all. Even if it's untouched by scavengers it isn't just going to lie there waiting to be buried in sediments. At 2500 years it's only under two feet of sediment? That isn't even enough to "crush and flatten it" as you claim would be happening. It wouldn't even be recognizable at 2500 years, it wouldn't even exist any more. That would have been the case already at 100 years, even five years for that matter. Organic things that are not buried decompose rapidly. I think standard Geology has unrealistic ideas about the conditions needed for fossilization but not this unrealistic. So, for the next while, we will only be referring to the first 2500 years of the example I explained. Once we get past that, we can expand the timeline. I'm going to re-quote the above in smaller bits to address what's going on:
First of all if it takes 100 years to bury something an inch deep, by that time any creature would have been decomposed completely, utterly disintegrated, never having a chance to get fossilized at all. You are correct.My scenario was overly simplistic in order to try and keep the "unwieldyness" of it all down a bit. I would like to remain focused on the geologic timescale and get to the stacks of rock eventually. A little leeway from your part in accepting this fossilization would be helpful. You are absolutely correct that most land-creatures would be decomposed and "utterly disintegrated" and can't be fossilized. "Most" is even an understatement... it would be in the realm of 99.99% "most." But you do accept that sometimes fossils form, right? Can we just assume that "some form of fossilization" took place for this particular creature in order for it to eventually become a fossil? Let's say... it gets completely coated in tar so that no insects or bacteria or anything would touch it. And, also luckily for us... the fossil was in a place that was simply undisturbed for the 2500 years of it being buried 2-feet deep in the sediment. Well, I fear you've lost me completely. I have no idea what you are trying to say here. I can't get past the idea that any dead thing could remain undisturbed under the conditions you describe, as you keep saying. Perhaps here is where my Floodist perspective makes it too difficult to follow you. That event would have provided perfect opportunities for fossilization of the billions of things in the rocks, by rapidly burying everything in wet sediment and subjecting it to compaction soon after burial, thus providing the ideal chemical environment for fossilization. Having said that, I gather you just want me to accept that this creature was undisturbed for 2500 years? Well, let's see how far I can go with that.
Can you accept this for now? If so, great, we can move on. If not... just let me know and we'll have to work something else out before moving on. If you'd like, I don't even have an issue with saying that God preserved this creature from bacteria/disintegration in order to have a fossil... for now, anyway. Once we get to the geologic column stack-stuff, we can revisit this if you'd like. I'm the one who would have a problem with the idea that God preserved the creature since I believe the natural effects of a worldwide Flood would do that just fine without divine intervention. But again, if you just want me to accept that it was preserved despite the utter lack of conditions that could have preserved it, let's see how far I can go with that assumption.
Faith writes: Even if it's untouched by scavengers it isn't just going to lie there waiting to be buried in sediments. I don't understand this statement. If it's untouched by scavengers (other creatures, bugs, bacteria... untouched by all scavangers...) why wouldn't it just lie there waiting to be buried in sediments? Where would it go? What would move it if all creatures, bugs, bacteria leave it untouched? It's dead. OK, I misunderstood. I didn't include all the agents of decomposition in the category "scavenger," just larger creatures. So we can drop this and move on. So it is supposedly untouched by ALL agents of decomposition. OK.
Faith writes: At 2500 years it's only under two feet of sediment? Yes. That's correct. 100 years for "about 1 inch"2400 years for "about 24 inches" 2500 years for 2 feet (just to keep numbers generally round-ish). This is all from a constant deposition rate of a quarter-of-a-mm every year.From my brief checks, this is a general, average deposition rate (when areas are in states of deposition). If we're looking into what "mainstream geology" says about the geologic column... then we have to use the numbers and rates that "mainstream geology" uses. They say it's a very slow process. When I googled a few things I saw deposition rates as low as negatives (erosion rates) and as high as 3-4mm per year.I picked "1 inch per 100 years" because it was within this range and the numbers came out generally nice to look at and understand. If you'd like, I can redo the scenario with a higher or lower rate that we both agree on, just let me know. We're pushing the envelope of my ability to go with all this, but changing the numbers wouldn't help. I'll just keep holding on for now...
Faith writes: That isn't even enough to "crush and flatten it" as you claim would be happening. I completely agree that 2 feet under is not enough to "crush and flatten it."You're wrong, however, in saying that I claimed this. What I said is that this weight is enough to "start" crushing and flattening it. Not "finish" crushing and flattening it. OK, my mistake, though I might even want to quibble with that. But it's not a big deal so I won't quibble with it.
The idea was attempting to show was that there is some weight upon that creature at this point, and that weight would begin the flattening process. Maybe at 2-feet-under it only flattens by a few millimeters. Maybe a bit more. But the process is just starting... it won't finish until much later. OK
Faith writes: It wouldn't even be recognizable at 2500 years, it wouldn't even exist any more. That would have been the case already at 100 years, even five years for that matter. Organic things that are not buried decompose rapidly. I think standard Geology has unrealistic ideas about the conditions needed for fossilization but not this unrealistic. The rest of your issues goes back to the fossilization of the not-touched creature.Are you okay with accepting that this creature gets-fossilized-one-way-or-another at this point? (and we can move onto more of the geological-column issues...) Or would you like me to describe and amend the scenario to adopt a more detailed account of how the fossilization could occur here? (andwe will focus on this 2500 year period for a longer time...). No, let's move on for now.
Also, it is important to note that for this entire 2500 years, there is "a landscape" at the surface. Animals are living and dying (most decomposing and disintegrating as you suggest). Plants and trees are growing and dying as well. The environment is changing in the sense that generations are going by, but not-changing in the sense that living things exist and "a landscape" exists. The living things simply deal with the incoming rate of sedimentation (1 inch per 100 years) and go about their lives. OK for now. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Admin Director Posts: 13042 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
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