Someone who admits he knows nothing about geology, asking where the colum came from?

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Originally posted by funkmasterfreaky:
Okay I'm asking on this thread for mostly help.

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Quite admirable. Most learning begins with a question.

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I get frustrated looking at geology because I personally can't look at this colum. How consistent across the globe is this column, as far as we have discovered?

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Some clarification might be in order here. Are you asking about the stratigraphic column or the geological time scale? Because the subject is so complex, and difficult to address in a forum such as this, I recommend picking up a basic geology text and reading about it. One of the first things you will learn is that geology is not as easy to pick up as some creationists would have you think. There is a lot of abstract thinking in time and space, along with historical aspects to learn, in order to see just how the column developed.

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Why is accepted as the standard? (the ruler so to speak)

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A simple answer would be because of meticulous correlation carried out over many generations of work on all continents. In reality there is no true single stratigraphic column. Rather there is one for each location and those locations can be correlated from one to the next, virtually around the world. This was not an easy task and some work is still going on. The geological time scale is a bit different. It is a relative time scale based on mapping during the early days of geologic studies, mostly in Europe, and now extended in usefulness around the world. This is an off-the-cuff, and highly abbreviated description, of course. There is a lot of colorful history and arcane terminology that goes into a real study of the subject.

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In our household we are very interested in our earth and it's constant movement.

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All the more reason to pick up a text. Remember to keep it basic at first. If you miss this step, you will end up unable to understand and critically analyze what you read later on. Many of our creationist posters on this board have committed this error and now place themselves in jeopardy of believing or rationalizing almost any hypothesis that comes along. For example, virtually every one of them does not have a basic understanding of uniformitarianism. They have been told what it is by their professional creationists and are unable to say, "Wait a second, that's not what I learned from my basic reading!"

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
The great ages come from two souces:

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(1) Generally from assuming that layering has always occurred at slow rates.

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(2) Specifically, by radiodating of certain minerals. This assumes nuclear radiodecay has always occured at the same rate.

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Now (1) is completely unjustifiable if one beleives the global flood was a literal event. Of course sedimentaiton rates were vastly increased during the flood and could have generated much of the geolgoical column in a year.

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That's one mighty big 'if.'

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However, (2) is a very sensible thing to do. However, creationists have recently found very promising evidence that the radiodecay rate was accelerated in the last 10,000 years. Why would God do this? Radiodecay of minerals generates heat. Mainstream we already know that some of the Earth's inner heat comes from radiodecay. We think decay was acclerated by God to heat up the crust and mantle and rapidly generate continental drift and sea-level changes during the flood.

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Actually, there is no evidence for this variable decay rate.

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The geological column is fine with me. it's just how it got there that I disagree with evolutionists on. What mainstream geologists rarely point out is that most layering on land is due to marine (seawater) inundations, not rivers, lakes and small floods.

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Incorrect. If this were so, how do geologists explain coral reefs, beach sands, ribbon cherts, and shale basins? I don't know where TC and TB ever got this idea, but it really is erroneous.

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The geo-column is very compatible with the Genesis Flood.

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Except that there is no flood deposit.

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No-one can explaion in detail why every fossil type is where it is.

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I can. Evolution.

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But as I'm sure you know, almost all fossils appear suddenly in the fossil record without transitonal forms so the evolutionary explantion is a faith based one too.

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Actually, many transitional forms are known and the sudden appearance is simply apparent.

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Much of the fact that formations can be correlated semi-globally actually favours the flood model. Many of the formaitons can be associated with particular innundaitons that were almost definitely global. (Sea levels can rise locally if the land subsides of course). Mainstream geologists call these 'epeiric-seas' becasue they think they inundated slowly and formed placid seas. However, the rocks frequently reveal they were formed under strong currents and we simply reinterperet these 'epeiric seas' as impinging flood waters from the sea.

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Never mind that every time I ask for evidence of these strong currents I am greeted with deafening silence.

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Because of their blinkered approach mainstream geologists have completely misinterpreted how the huge formations around the world were formed. I love geology but the flood is the answer, not gradualism.

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Yes, thousands of geologists, past and present are wrong, but TB has the answer. LOL!

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
I do not claim to be able to personally explain every formation.

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But isn't that the issue? Mainstream explanations account for virtually all formations. Why should we put credence in a theory that explains just a few beds?

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What I am saying is that there is evidence for rapidity in much of the column.

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Well, I suppose if you wish to redefine 'much' just as TC has redefined 'apparent' and 'in-place' I would have to agree with you. However, you are committing a logical fallacy in extending some parts of the column to all parts of the column.

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You have problems with sands being transported over 200-300 miles. You obviously have never, even for a second, pondered the possibility that this was a huge calamity. Of course a marine innundation surging across a continent would transport sand for hundreds of miles!

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Yeah, the wrong direction in this case. Why do these eolian units have grain size distributions that defy water deposition? How did insect tracks become preserved in such sandstones? Why do we see some beds that are clearly stream deposits interlayered with the dunes? Basically, to accept your scenario, we have to abandon huge amounts of critical data and suspend our basic principles of geology.

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We just have no problem with lots of layers forming quickly - I have seen these form in seconds on video I have in my hands documenting the experiments of a French hydro-geologist.

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Yes. How many experiments did Brethault do with silts, clays and calc sediments. Not to mention the layering in evaporites. I have no problem with rapid deposition of some sandston laminae, either. In fact, this was explained to me in Geology 101 a looooong time ago. However, no creationist has ventured a guess as to how long a time span occurs between laminated sets, laminated beds and laminated formations. And then there's the reality that many laminated sands might have been destroyed to form even younger beds. You really need to account for this.

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Any cycle of the planet can be fitted to any cycle one sees in varves! Just calibrate to the cycle you want - one simply leaves the time per varve as a free parameter and you can get anything to work as long as it's in the ballpark. As scientists we all do this all the time. It doesn't prove that that cycle was the cycle you thought it was.

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In this case, not. That is no how we calibrate varves. It is done by radiometric dating, comparison with tree rings, etc., etc. It is also clear the true varves are an annual event.