Glenn Morton's Evidence Examined

Yes and there are lots of places where the flat strata have been distorted in various ways after deposition. That doesn't change the fact that they are fundamentally and originally flat slabs of rock.And besides, the contact with the Moenkopi is very limited compared to the enormous stretches of flat Kaibab surface in the area.

It's obvious that it's the only explanation possible. There is no clear mechanism for any of the sorting by the Flood, but if it can't be attributed to water principles then it has to be location. I don't have to answer anything.Meanwhile, there is equally good reason to regard the OE explanation as untenable. That was my point of course which you are ignoring. And when the utter nonsense is recognized of millions of years to produce a variation that normally takes at most a few centuries, if that, there's no need even to ask you for a "mechanism," since the idea is simply nonsensical.

Vertical sorting is even more nonsensical on the OE model. On the Flood model we have rising water depositing sediments in layers. On the OE model you've got imaginary landscapes getting buried and being lithified over huge spans of time as if that could possibly produce a huge flat featureless rock, with another landscape turning to rock on top of it. This is SO nonsensical I don't know how it survived as the dominant theory for five minutes.

Yeah y'all can rationalize the most egregious absurdities. I don't think you have any feeling at all for how long a million years is.Oh and I haven't overlooked the flaws in the Flood model. Go read what I've said. They are amply acknowledged.Your turn. Give up the rationalizing and recognize what an absurdity you are supporting.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What happens to the rocks after they are deposited is irrelevant to the point I'm making about their original flatness. But the vast preponderance of the strata are STILL FLAT.

Well, I would assume they weren't occupying the same piece of real estate. You want more than that?But if they show up together in the same layer that doesn't prove they shared an original location if that's what you are implying; they just got put together during the Flood for some reason.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yeah I got it already. The idea is absurd that the changes would occur rapidly and then they'd not change at all for millions of years. Change is one of the most predictable things in biology it seems to me. Every single generation of offspring differs from its parents by some degree, even when it's very slow. Over not a LOT of time you should start to see the changes even in that case. Consider genetic drift. And let a bunch of them become reproductively isolated and you should get recognizable changes in very short order.

Nonsense yourself. What I said is true. What you see in the rock record is either flatness or tectonic deformation. It's tectonic deformation I'm saying is irrelevant because it changes the basic flatness of the rock when it was deposited and the point I'm making is about the flatnes. The point, starting back in Message 134 is about the featureless barren flatness of the original deposition, which ought to show that any tracks or other impressions found on it occurred on a vast mud flat and not in the sort of environment or landscape that OE geo theory imputes to the history of the rocks. EVERY rock where such surface impressions are found had to have been such a vast damp sedimentary surface and not a livable habitat. That calls the whole theory of former landscapes, environments and time periods into question. Supposedly it shows the wrongness of the Flood interpretation but actually it shows much more the wrongness of the OE interpretation. Long tides would provide time gaps for such impressions to have occurred during the Flood. Also as I explained somewhere earlier have somewhat dried out the mud so that the impressions would remain. I don't know why this is a problem at all. How could I ever mean "true" or perfect flatness? I know we're dealing with rocks and YECs impute thousands of years to them so how could I mean any kind of perfect flatness?I also know that thickness must vary along the extent of any layered rock. It was deposited, according to YE creationism, in the Flood after all, and there couldn't have been perfect evenness of sedimentary deposition. But Steno's original horizontality rules in the strata and I'm sure he too could see the variations he nevertheless had no problem calling horizontal. Why is this a question? The flatness is obviously relative, but it is obvious, it is visible, it's apparent in photo after photo of strata that have been posted here, as well as cross sections and other illustrations. The deviations from flatness are minuscule.The point I was trying to make is not affected by such minuscule variations in the flatness. We're still talking about a vast mud plain in which the tracks and the ripples and the raindrops and the burrows are to be found, NOT a livable habitat. It's a ROCK. It was a vast mud flat at one point. It was NEVER a "landscape."Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You are simply taking for granted the OE explanation of the rocks and the time periods, begging the question being another word for it. But just looking at the rocks and the tracks and the other impressions all that can be seen of that "time period" is an extensive mud flat which allowed those impressions to be made, no "environment" other than that mud flat. That's my point. Those creatures you are describing never lived in that "environment" that belongs to that "time period," they merely died as the sediment encroached on their former environment and buried it -- although depending on what level of the strata we're talking about it would already have been covered by a series of mud flats anyway, their former habitat having long since been buried under the whole stack.The evidence is the impressions made in a barren featureless mud flat on top of a whole stack of similar barren featureless mud flats of different sediments. The evidence shows that there was never a livable environment at that location, just the mud flat. Many mud flats stacked one on top of another.I'm not sure what you want me to get from your cross section. For one thing what does the "Sh" in "Marine Sh" (also Lewis, Pierre, Mancos, Benton and Aspen sh) mean?The best I can do with the overall illustration is to suppose that strata were originallyl laid down over that entire distance crossing all those states, but sank into the "Marine Sh" whatever that is.I can't tell enough about the picture to have an opinion about whether animals could live there now or not, at the limestone outcrop in Kansas, but all that remains of whatever originally lived there before the strata/mud flats buried it all, is the fossils of quite an abundance of creatures. The fossils of course indicate that all those creatures once lived -- somewhere, but where is not possible to ascertain from the illustration since they probably were transported there in sea water; they certainly died there and were buried there. It's even possible I guess they did originally live there but all those strata certainly buried them.But in any case it's just a place where creatures were overtaken and buried in wet sediments. It's not even an example of surface impressions like tracks is it?I suppose there must be many "time periods" represented there too?But all that is guessing. You don't mention tracks in the strata at this location but wherever they do exist, it looks to me like the flood buried their habitat and overtook them as they ran, and they had no place to go except to run across the huge expanse of mud flats which extended as far as they could see, there being no livable area left for them because it was all getting covered by the Flood water. The water would just keep rising of course and bury everything in its path.I don't mean to claim that this is the only idea about how the Flood would have done its thing, but it seems like one very possible scenario. After it got high enough it may have precipitated out the sediments instead of bringing them in on waves. But all this is guessing.The only thing I'm quite sure of is that the tracks and other impressions in the rocks, rocks that cover a huge amount of territory, couldn't have occurred in the supposedly livable environments OE Geology pictures from the contents of the rocks.The rocks aren't a record of living things in living environments, they are purely a record of the death of living things in unimaginable numbers; and the death of their environments as well, under an enormous amount of sediments stacked in layers. Whatever managed to leave tracks in upper layers had simply been able to keep on top of the rising sedimentary deposits, or in some cases were probably even carried there on the flood waters. See above.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

If the topic is the one I inaugurated about tracks and other impressions made in the rock layers, then it's off topic. And I'm not sure what you wanted to get across with this picture. That may be quite wrong but I'm not sure. What I mean by tight contact is the contact between the surfaces of two strata, which can be seen as quite tight in some photos where the strata have not been tectonically deformed, as in this picture, but retain their horizontality. This pictures looks like it could very well have exhibited tight straight contacts between those layers when they were still horizontal. Even now the contacts look pretty straight although any former tightness has been disturbed by the shifting of the rocks in relation to each other. Why slow? Although many or most stratigraphic columns exhibit pretty clearcut sedimentary differences, there is no reason I know of why there couldn't be combinations of sediments like this example that also formed layers. Of course there's no problem at all if you don't think of it as taking aeons of time to form. The Flood would probably have laid that down in a matter of hours. I guess if there are recognizable fossil contents you just classify them according to their usual "time period" anyway, which a Floodist will translate into a level in a stratigraphic column... But the sharpness of contacts only applies to horizontal stacks of strata. Once they are overturned there are no more sharp contacts, even though in this case it's easy enough to suppose they were there originally. You mean from limestone to mudstone?But of course to me those aren't "environments," they're just rocks formed from sediments deposited in a certain order in the Flood over what was probably a pretty brief span of time. See top of post.

The point was that they would like to stop me, not that they are stopping me. Wasn't that clear in what I said? It IS intimidating though, of course, and it makes me hesitate when I'm accused of being unkind to a fellow believer. Well, my experience of it is that I'm being criticized for being unkind to a fellow believer, and that's what makes me loath to go on with my arguments. Hesitant anyway, but for now I'm OK with it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

By the way, when I look closely at those overturned layers in Iraq I notice the rubble between some of the layers, which in other contexts I remember as being interpreted as erosion brought about by a long period on the surface. But that may not be the interpretation here: if not, why not?

Then tell me what I'm missing. I'm only concerned about the original flatness. Which I've never seen except as a result of tectonic deformation. The simple fact that it is a vast mudflat; it's not a sea, it's not a land environment/habitat, it's a vast expanse of wet sediment. Whatever ended up on the surface of it would make tracks or burrows or whatever the creature normally does to try to get off it, because a mudflat -- which could be composed of sand or clay or silt or calcareous ooze --is probably not its normal habitat and it couldn't survive there for long. You DON'T see them "living in that formation, you see them DEAD AND FOSSILIZED in that formation. They never lived there, they may have been transported there, died and were buried there. Even a clam can't live on a mudflat. DEAD in them. I would guess that "lake sediments" are just sediments, after all, and fish, birds and insects live in lots of different environments. So these sediments happen to be frequently found in lakes but are not by definition "lake sediments." Or if they are lake sediments they could have been transported there. There's no reason to suppose they represent a lake that was once where the rock is; that's just excessive imagination making too much of simple facts. Why do you suppose these things belong there, actually live on a vast expanse of wet sediment? It's just a vast mudflat, why should anything at all live there? Can't termite mounds be transported, or dinosaur nests? Or maybe the mounds WERE built on the spot and the eggs laid on the spot; maybe there was time for that during a time of distress. But it's a vast mudflat, it's not a livable habitat for anything that walks or runs or builds nests or swims. Actually it's YOUR (straw man) flood that doesn't hold water. Mine makes vast mudflats one on top of another that bury living things. I just defined it sufficiently to get the point across. You can give up your straw man notion of it. Just picture a mudflat for pete's sake, that was deposited by ocean water and extends for hundreds or thousands of square miles. It isn't going to be PERFECTLY flat but it will most certainly be describable as flat. Good grief, you guys can invent problems out of nothing. The answer is they aren't and they don't. Hey we KNOW it's an unlivable habitat for pete's sake; all it is is a vast expanse of mud, just wet sand or clay or silt or calcareous ooze or whatnot, whatever is in the strata at that level. Nothing lives on a vast expanse of mud except maybe some insects. Nothing that makes footprints lives on a mud flat. And whatever evidence you think shows they build nests and reproduce there is probably just a misinterpretation. It's a MUD FLAT for pete's sake. It becomes a vast ROCK for pete's sake. Yeah, what I said. Oooo semantics, such fun. It's not a LIVABLE HABITAT for anything that builds nests or leaves tracks in mud or swims in the ocean etc etc etc. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Every single rock in the strata is such an example and I would think I've been more than clear about that. Every rock that has tracks and burrows and raindrops and other impressions in it is what I've been talking about. Every single rock layer that covers a vast expanse, and most do, represents a former vast wet sedimentary expanse, which is not a livable environment.This is what you said, and it's certainly a case of begging the question: You are assuming the OE explanation that this is a livable environment in a time period and these creatures actually lived in that environment. That is begging the question, that is assuming the OE viewpoint. I answered this elsewhere but you need to recognize that this IS begging the question, assuming what is to be proved. "Time periods" doesn't necessrily have to do with age of the rocks, but it is certainly implied in this discussion since you have the OE idea of separate living environments connected to separate stratigraphic formations. This is why you keep assuming the creatures that are found fossilized in the rock had to have actually lived there. You've got all these separate framed environments in mind; they are certainly periods of time separated from the other periods of time.I think I've ansewred your question already: the clams were buried in the flood there, they never lived there. Perhaps the flood transported them there. I'm talking about ALL the different sediments that were once a vast expanse of wet sediment that became the rock in the stratigraphic column composed of that sediment. Sorry if I haven't been consistently clear about this but I have said it a number of times. They are ALL mudflats in the sense that they are all a great expanse of wet sediment on which nothing could live. You are still asking this? The FLood overtook them, or the Flood deposited them there. The unlivable environment is what the Flood deposited, and it deposited layers and layers and layers of it, different wet sediments that nothing could possibly live on. Their actual livable environment would be buried under ALL the layers of sediment up to whatever level we are talking about. Or the Flood overtook their environment at that level as it rose. Either way the Flood is burying their living space. [qs] They never lived on the mud/sand/clay/silt/mud flat. The sediment expanse buried their habitat wherever it was.

Oh well. The futility is truly remarkable. There is no older time or environment in the Flood scenario. Sigh. That's how OE Geology sorts things, not YE. OE has separate environments in separate time periods represented by each rock in a stratigraphic column. The Flood treats each rock as a layer of sediment that was deposited during the Flood, period. Whatever was transported and ended up in the rock came from no "time period" or "older" environment. It no doubt did have its own environment it came from but I don't know how one would know where that was. As the sediments were being laid down they buried living things.Sometimes living things were nevertheless able to run across their surface, which in my current scenario would have been while the tide was out.This whole discussion should be a way to contrast the separated environments of OE, each defined by a slab of rock, with the single scenario of the Flood. The separated environments are assumed to have been livable environments, but the tracks and burrows and raindrops are all made in flat featureless sediment/rock, not in any livable environment. This is the case throughout the whole stratigraphic column wherever such impressions occur in a rock. Since the rocks generally extend quite a distance horizontally in their barren featureless rockishness, this is evidence that there were no livable landscapes represented by any of the strata, there was nothing but rock that was of course originally wet sediment.(I do apologize by the way for the term "mudflat" which I think confused things. I had been reading about a couple of slabs of dried mud that came recently from the Bay of Fundy with bird tracks and raindrops nicely preserved in them. I think this was from one of Glenn Morton's articles. It makes a nice corroboration of my tidal scenario, where the long time between tides allows the mud to dry out enough to preserve the impressions in it. Anyway I started thinking of all wet sediments as "mud" forgetting that mud is a very specific term to geologists. So every time I said "mudflat" I wasn't thinking particularly of mud but of wet sand or clay or carbonates or any sediment etc.) Or dinosaurs to Mesozoic sediments and so on. I really wish I knew. But meanwhile I can content myself with showing how the distribution of ammonites and trilobites in a stratigraphic column doesn't support evolution, and how tracks and burrows and raindrop impressions on the surface of flat barren featureless extensive strata only serve to show that the OE environment interpretation is nonsense. It would certainly be nice to know why fossils are sorted as they are but there's enough evidence against OE in general to shelve that question for a while. By water most likely. Sigh. There was no "meantime." They got carried to wherever the water dumped them along with its current sediment load, and were buried in the sediment. Edited by Faith, : fix quote codeEdited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.