Attention Faith: Geological data and the Flood

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You may be right, as I anticipated from the beginning, that there is absolutely no room here at EvC for the YEC point of view. It is considered to violate the foundations of science. That being the case it is a sham even to pretend to have debates with those who begin from the Bible, and YECs should be told this up front, even in fact warned not to bother coming here at all.

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I am not a YEC, but that has been my observation here as well. Not that the Bible should be considered science, but that there isn't a lot of respect for YECs in general. The response to your post "Oh well it keeps them from doing stupid things" is a typical example.This message has been edited by gene90, 09-14-2005 02:23 AM

Thank you for the acknowledgment. That was a very welcome gift out of the blue. From someone who doesn't even share my views too. Thanks.

Contnet deleted (Sorry didn't mean to post to this thrread - and I don't think that the post I replied to belongs here either)This message has been edited by PaulK, 09-14-2005 03:26 AM

Let's keep the thread on target please. No more off-topic posts pertaining to that particular discussion.And Faith, please take as long as you like to respond. As always, we appreciate quality rather than speed.AdminIRH

I don't know if the other opponents have been decided but I would like to comment on this. The continents spreading apart happened via a divergent action not a comverget one. In other words, they were pulled apart not pushed apart. Thus your mechanism for the anticline/syncline formation must correctly take that into account. Because of this, it is necessary that there was some other compressional action to cause the folds prior to the divergent action that split the contients. At a divergent boundary you get rift valleys and lots of volcanoes, not compressional style folding.IRH can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe these folds occured due to exactly the same kind of compressional tectonics that created the Himalays. A different type of compression called subduction is what created the Rockies but it is still a result of two plates colliding rather than being ripped apart. The Rockies are a result of continental crust colliding with oceanic crust while the others are a result of continental crust colliding with more continental crust.

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No smoking signs by gas stations. No religion in the public square. The government should keep us from being engulfed in flames on earth, and that is pretty much it. -- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

I don't know the first thing about this stuff, but can I make a suggestion? Instead of offering theory, can you extract and offer the observations upon which the theory is built upon?Remember that for YECs, all scientific hypotheses / theories / facts are questionable. They're in the business of re-interpreting data. I've been suggesting then, that offering theories as evidence against YEC arguments doesn't work, and just leads to conflict (even though I know you're not being confrontational at all here). It has to be data, observation that's presented.Sorry to butt in; but this is a clear case of one of the things I think leads to problems. I'd ask that, if you want to discuss this, can you bring it to the YEC approaches to empirical investigation thread?I'm not sure if you read my thougths about this there. So I'm not sure if you'll agree with what I'm saying or not.Not sure if I'm butting in too much here. And I REALLY want to avoid cluttering this thread with off-topic chatter (which is what this is).

Thank you, Ben. I don't understand quite a bit of what you have been proposing and hope I will have time eventually to give it some serious thought, but this point is clear, true and very constructive advice.That is the problem I keep having with jazzns' corrections of everything I propose. I'm just supposed to take it on his word that things are the way science says they are. Actually, I can see how it happened when I look at diagrams of the continental ridge, and my suggestion is not outlandish on the face of it at all, since the force is exerted from the ridge itself to separate the continents. I know perfectly well that the action is divergent and that conventional science understands this in a way opposite to what I'm proposing. It illuminates nothing, and his endless patronizing corrections do not inspire me in the slightest to continue the conversation.

Take a sheet of paper.Now by only pulling on the edges make it fold in the middle.Then when that does not work, try pushing on the edges and see if the paper folds. It seems as though Faith is not the only one unable to seperate fact from theory. The fact is that you cannot create compressional structures without compression.The tectonic activity that pushed North America away from Europe was divergent. This is also a fact. Any YEC theory that describes that formation therefore must take that into account. Thus the folded rock cannot be a result of the divergent action that seperated the continents. This is not up for debate. This is merely a statement of fact.

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No smoking signs by gas stations. No religion in the public square. The government should keep us from being engulfed in flames on earth, and that is pretty much it. -- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

You don't have to take my word for it. You can go look up the exact same facts that I am simply stating. Google for mid atlantic ridge or divergent boundaries. You suggestion is impossible. Your suggestion is contrary to the fact that a divergent action can never produce compressional structures. Diverget boundaries create rifts valleys and volcanoes, not folds. Non-negotiable. What you are proposing is contrary to the facts. The order of events, regardless of time frame, is that the folds occurred due to some earlier compressional tectonic activity and then later the continents split due to divergent tectonic activity. You can now theorize as to how that happened in the flood year or whatever but that is the order. My posts are not meant to be patronizing. All I am here to do is to get you straight on the facts. If you don't want to base your explanation on facts then what is the point?Go ahead and make your YEC explanations with whatever presumptions are allowed in this thread. But do so based on the facts.This message has been edited by Jazzns, 09-14-2005 01:43 PM

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No smoking signs by gas stations. No religion in the public square. The government should keep us from being engulfed in flames on earth, and that is pretty much it. -- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

I don't know what "fact" means. Observation is what I can see with my own two eyes. Theory is what is derived from observations. I What if I hold the ends of the paper and I have a friend violently push a ruler up from the bottom? I can get a form at least GENERALLY similar to folded paper. Would it be considered a "compressional structure"? Is there something special about "compressional structures" besides that they're pointy at the top? If not, then I would know MY "structure" can be called a "compressional structure." If you had described this through describing observations, such as some types of wrinkling that is present, etc., I would have been able to figure it out myself. Your analogy helped some, but not enough to distinguish between my postulation and what an actual "compressional structure" is.If I try and figure it out from the words themselves, I come up with "structure that was compressed." How do I know something was compressed? What are the critical observations which led to the conclusion?Let's try another one while we're at it. That's nice. What are the observations that led you to this conclusion? What measurements were made that allowed you to tell me it's fact?If you don't want to extract the observations yourself, that's probably fine. You're just leaving it up to Faith to find them herself. But I wouldn't wait around for a reply. It'll be a while with all that reading for homework.Now, you don't have to extract ALL the observations. But if you could mention a couple fundamental ones, then we can deal with the actual observations, and look for alternative explanations. And alternative explanations is the name of the game for YECs. We've at least got to the point where we should be able to acknowledge that.Hope this helps clarify what I think is necessary. I posted the reply here because we're actually clarifying things that are relevant to the discussion (I think).

1. That is not a fold it is a different kind of deformation. IIRC that kind of thing does actually happen and it produces different structures.
2. We are not just talking about one bend we are talking about a whole anticline/syncline sequence.
3. Elements that are part of the matrix of the rock strain based on the direction of the tectonic force.
4. If there are any faults they will always slip in the direction of the force. For compression it will be toward the force leaving a reverse fault. For divergent action it will be toward the ridge leaving a normal fault. IIRC.So I guess what I am talking about here really is a collection of facts that all come together to make one fact. There is no other way to make those anticline/syncline sequences. It was compressional tectonic activity. Yes and that is called stretching the analogy for a purpose other than what it was intended. Yea. They have evidence of being compressed. See above. If something is compressed it is a compressional structure. Therefore calling it a product of a diverget action such as rifting is an incorrect fact. It is compressed because it shows evidence of being compressed. That does not mean that it is any less of a fact that it is a compressional structure. The theory would be HOW it became compressed not THAT it became compressed. 1. The fact that the divergent action continues today.
2. The fact that the structures of the divergent action (rift valleys, normal faults, volcanism) can be seen on the boundary. (iceland/mid atlantic ridge)Again that we see these things in order to determine that this is a divergent action does not make it any less of a fact that it actually IS a divergent action. The theorey would need to explain HOW this happened not THAT it happened. I am available for questions. I have discovered that I am able to get more clear information across when I am brief. If there is a question into the nitty gritty details about it after the fact then I can answer them. Or you can go out for youself and verify that these are actualy the facts. Either way, it is better to be brief and be open to further discussion then to assume your audience knows nothing and fill up a bunch of pages going all the way down to the basics. Especially since it can take away from this discussion which is about the area that IRH described. That anticline/syncline structures can be formed by divergent tectonics is an invalid observation. It is not true. That is all that I am trying to correct. You and Faith may now continue with an alternate explanation to the old earth theory as to the geologic history of IRH's area but it must include the fact that those were created by compression.This message has been edited by Jazzns, 09-14-2005 02:26 PM

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No smoking signs by gas stations. No religion in the public square. The government should keep us from being engulfed in flames on earth, and that is pretty much it. -- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

Of course it was divergent. The continents separated. But this appears to me to have been done by a force that erupted from underneath the previously united land mass, and split it apart by increasing the sea floor width, which would have exerted pressure on the separating edges of the continents. Perhaps the original eruption itself buckled the mountains on either side of the split it made, but it still looks to me like a PUSHING or COMPRESSING action at the site of origin. I gave the illustration of bubbles beneath a cooking pot of something that forms a skin on its surface, like a flour or egg based sauce. The bubbling pushes the skin aside and it folds or ripples at the edges. This makes sense to me, and although you keep insisting I'm wrong and referring to concepts like "divergent" and "convection" as if they prove me wrong, they don't, as they don't create a visual image of the action that makes any sense to me.You have given me some links on another thread to explain this but I'm afraid you need to be much more explicit than you are being and please don't answer me with volumes of research I have to do myself. I've already done a great deal, and you need to put this into your own words. The terms "divergent" and "convection" need a lot more factual detail. I have no idea what kind of action "convection" causes.

I'm sorry, we are getting way off topic again.I'm afraid I have to say I simply can't respond to this topic after all. If I were a YEC geologist I'm sure I'd have lots to say, and I wish some other YECs would come to this thread in any case, scientists or not.Certainly I could ask many questions -- what are all the white things in one of the pictures? for instance -- but I can't think of any that would lead me in any particular direction at the moment. I could require a total course in geology from you, how each kind of rock is formed and so on, but without a sense of where I'd take it I don't see the purpose in it, and I wouldn't want to do that to you anyway.I don't know how to make this topic something I can relate to. Maybe it can't be done. I appreciate your intention and your effort but I think what has been said about YEC methodology in the last few days is the key here. YECs are in the business of answering evolutionism. They may be scientists but their aim is to come up with alternative explanations of the phenomena that at present are used to support evolutionism and OE theory. I can look at a landscape and "see" the Flood, and to some extent -- nothing near what a scientist could do of course -- I can postulate some alternative explanations when I know how the evolutionist/OE explanation goes in a particular case.But not being a geologist I can't approach a bare landscape with its variety of features from rocks to fossils to flora and fauna and construct any kind of hypothesis from it. And this isn't what YECs do, at least nonscientist YECs who like to exercise our minds on coming up with alternatives to evo explanations or interpretations of given data or phenomena.I'm just not connecting with this thread and don't know what might change that.This message has been edited by Faith, 09-14-2005 09:53 PM

This, Jazzns, was precisely the kind of thing I was trying to avoid. If you look at the original post, I wanted to provide Faith a chance to work out her ideas from raw data without having conventional geology waved in her face. Up to this point, I had never encountered a YEC even willing to try!I fully realised that including conventional geology in this thread would get us nowhere. I am very disappointed in the evolutionists here who have wilfully hijacked this thread just for the chance to jump on another YEC for having notions contrary to conventional wisdom, which was very much against my original intention. It certainly makes me question the self-control of the evolutionists on this forum.
The Rock Hound

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"Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do."

We may get some interesting topics out of this thread, but it itself probably needs to be closed. It is too far off topic.

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YECs are in the business of answering evolutionism. They may be scientists but their aim is to come up with alternative explanations of the phenomena that at present are used to support evolutionism and OE theory. I can look at a landscape and "see" the Flood, and to some extent -- nothing near what a scientist could do of course -- I can postulate some alternative explanations when I know how the evolutionist/OE explanation goes in a particular case.

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But not being a geologist I can't approach a bare landscape with its variety of features from rocks to fossils to flora and fauna and construct any kind of hypothesis from it. And this isn't what YECs do, at least nonscientist YECs who like to exercise our minds on coming up with alternatives to evo explanations or interpretations of given data or phenomena.

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I am sorry to say, Faith, that I have yet to see any YEC take raw geological data and construct a hypothesis, scientist or otherwise. I have yet to even meet a YEC geologist, seeing as creationism is unheard in Ireland.Perhaps you don't realise what you could do here. The very foundation of old earth geology is the raw data compiled over the last 200 years. It discredited creationism years before Darwin ever wrote Origin of the Species. Knocking away this pillar would effectively destroy conventional geology and make evolution largely unworkable, and yet, no YEC seems to have caught on so far, and they continue to hack away at the theories developed from the data.Exercise your mind all you want, but the crux of the debate always revolves around convincing others of your ideas. Reinterpreting the old earth theories hasn't worked especially well for years; perhaps it's time to try a different tactic?In fact, I would like to develop this further. I will start a new thread for it, and I hope to see you there.Thank you for your effort in this one.The Rock Hound

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"Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do."