Summations Only

Hi Faith,You're forgetting your Grand Canyon scenario, which has the layers deposited during the height of the flood and then being eroded away before they lithified as the flood receded. How is it that layers at the top of the Grand Canyon, which were soft when you say the erosion occurred and had no layers above them to create pressure, are solidly lithified. Just as solidly lithified as those same layers miles away where they're buried under layers of sediment.Here's a good diagram illustrating the problem: The Kaibab Limestone is the top layer at the Grand Canyon, but it is deeply buried at Bryce Canyon. How is it that it is just as firmly lithified in both places?This diagram also contradicts your belief that the layers are as flat as can be - obviously they're not flat over long distances (the diagram isn't to scale so the slope of the layers is exaggerated). The diagram also shows how layers can both bend and fault, which was another of your concerns, that there should be more faulting. On a scale of miles rock is very pliable, and when heated it is pliable on a scale of feet.--Percy

If all evidence contrary to your ideas is just evidence awaiting an explanation, your ideas can never be falsified.Can we at least agree that the best theory is the one that places the least amount of evidence in the awaiting explanation category?--Percy

When it snows on a hill in your part of the country, don't you get a uniform but tilted layer of snow?But anyway, why do you think horizontality means "flood"? Isn't slow deposition equally as capable of leaving horizontal layers, like this photo of an ancient Roman shipwreck on the seafloor where sediments are gradually collecting: A change in sediment type needs only a change in the nature of the overlying water column, which is often caused by changes in depth and proximity to shore. Sediments close to shore tend to be sand, those further out and deeper tend to be shale, and both tend to be made up of larger particles because waters are more energetic close to shore. Sediments far from shore receive little contribution from the runoff from land and so tend to be dominated by the detritus of biological activity.When a region subsides (decreases in elevation), as it first sinks beneath the waves the sedimentation is primarily sand. The ancient city of Alexandria, Egypt, is an example of relatively recent subsidence. Portions now lie beneath 15 to 20 feet of water, and today the sedimentation is primarily sand. As it sinks further and becomes further from shore the sedimentation will transition to shale. Should it subside enough to be far from shore the sedimentation will transition to a primarily biological composition, like limestone.Subsidence and uplift cause transitions between these three most common forms of sedimentary layers. They can be seen occurring today in oceans all around the world, and the history of these changing sedimentary processes can be observed in the geologic layers.Energetic floods like yours deposit undifferentiated jumbles of everything washed from the land or sea floor mixed together. There is nothing about a flood that would produce the uniform layers of sand, shale or limestone observed in the geologic column. More importantly, floods move and deposit coarse sediments, not fine sediments like the ones that make up most of most layers of the geologic column. Just how do you imagine a flood might produce these highly differentiated layers: first a layer of sand, then switching on a dime to shale, then limestone? Do you have examples of floods doing this anywhere in the world? Of course you don't, because floods don't do this.But we do have examples all around the world of all the types of sedimentary layers forming right now. We know the conditions required to form these layers. Layers like these aren't found after floods, such as the tsunami in Japan or the periodic flooding of rivers in the American interior.The sedimentary layers we see being deposited today have layers beneath them, and we can drill cores and see layers that were deposited hundreds, thousands and millions of years ago. We can see the transitions between types of sedimentary layers, and we can drill cores in many different places and track the encroachments and retreats of ancient seas across time.About your "knife-edge" transitions, they're not as knife-edged as you believe - close examination does reveal some gradual transition. The transition between layers represents thousands of years and the transition from one type of depositional environment to another was very gradual. In the Grand Canyon each inch of layer represents around two or three thousand years, thereabouts. In your flood scenario, the land is submerged and sediments are being deposited onto it. As one layer is completed and before another layers begins, how do you imagine runoff to occur on a submerged landscape? How do you imagine this an argument for the flood? Why does Vesuvius wait thousands of years between major eruptions? Why did the Japan earthquake and tsunami wait until a couple years ago? We live on an active and dynamic planet. The internal flows in the mantel and core cause forces to build up and occasionally seek relief using processes that we understand to a fair degree but cannot predict with any accuracy. Most fossils are not discovered in sedimentary rock that suggests flood or catastrophe, nor are they generally found as a "collection of fossils gathered within." Certainly we've uncovered fossil graveyards, but generally fossils are scattered about within a sedimentary layer, and radiometric dating reveals great differences in the ages of the fossils.--Percy

Well, that's very interesting since most of the layers consist of the kind of fine-grained sediments that cannot result from a flood. Yes, that's correct, the layers above the Kaibab at the Grand Canyon were eroded away. I won't quote the rest of what you say, just let me ask why you think you need anything more than uplift and erosion? Is it because you need the erosion to be very rapid, so you imagine that volcanoes and tectonic forces somehow caused the overlying strata to become "cracked and broken up" so that they could be eroded and carried away quickly? Don't you think all this cracking and breaking up would have left evidence behind? Don't you think that several thousand cubic miles of sediment eroded away within the last couple thousand years would have ended up somewhere where we'd notice so that you could point to it and say, "See, there's all the material from the sedimentary layers that used to lie above the Kaibab!"Things that have actually happened leave evidence behind. The things that you think have happened have somehow managed to leave no evidence behind, while the things that geologists think have happened have left evidence behind literally all over the place. Again, why do you think "horizontality and flatness" indicate flood? The majority of layers are marine, and huge expanses of marine basins are flat.And why do you think "lack of disturbance to the individual layers" is contrary to slow deposition over millions of years? Why do you even think the layers are undisturbed, since they contain evidence of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, floods, folding, intrusions and faults? Why do you think a stack of sedimentary layers being distorted together is contrary to slow deposition when the layers originally formed millions of years before? That's good, because it's wrong. Soaking a rock doesn't make it malleable.Besides, if the Kaibab was deeply buried long enough after the flood for you to believe it became rock, then that was so long after the flood that your special kind of rock that is malleable when wet would have dried out and would no longer be malleable. So you can just forget your "wet rock is malleable" argument. The facts are that rock is pliable on a scale of miles, and when heated it is pliable on a scale of feet. You don't need any special malleable rock to cause a stack of sedimentary layers to bend without fracturing.The rest of your argument seems to be that over the course of millions of years each newly forming sedimentary layer would experience its own unique set of bendings and distortions, and that they therefore couldn't form a neat stack of layers. This goes back to my question about the snow at the beginning of this message. If the top layer became bent and distorted into a series of ups and downs, why wouldn't the next layer deposited atop it conform to it just like snow? We *do* find these things in layers. Here's a picture of the interbedding at the Grand Canyon taken from a Bible website: AbE: This image raised the suspicions of HereBeDragons, for good reason as it turns out. The layers in this image cannot be interbedding, see my Message 188 for an explanation.Perhaps you're expecting such things to be conspicuously common, but large regions of sea floors are far from plate boundaries (where the most significant disturbances occur) and simply collect sediments for millennium after millennium, and most of the layers of the Grand Canyon formed on quiet sea floors. We do see multiple volcanic events, but you seem be expecting more than are recorded in the geologic record. Given that 99.99% of the world's surface has no volcanoes, just how many and how close together do you think volcanoes should be in the geologic record? Most areas of the Earth's surface go for millions and millions of years without sprouting a volcano. Take a look at the diagram again, this time taking note of the fact that the Grand Canyon and Zion Canyon are around a hundred miles apart: Volcanoes are a geologic expression of lava welling up from the interior and cannot affect buried layers. They're a result of the tectonic and magma forces, not a driving force of layer deformation. Magma pressuring the terrain up into a volcano would not have much if any bending effect on layers it passes through, and especially not on deeply buried layers miles away. If you're looking for something to drive the bending of layers you probably need to look to tectonic forces. You mean like this diagram from Wikipedia: Yes, we can see it in the diagram. Notice that the welling up of this magma through all the geologic layers hasn't deformed them one bit. Why is it that you keep attributing the bending of layers to the action of volcanoes? Again, they're a result of other forces, not a cause of forces. If you mean the tilted strata at the extreme left of the diagram separated by the Hurricane Fault, yes, they're the same strata in the same order, though not all strata are present on both sides of the fault. The magma dike is miles from the Hurricane Fault and did not cause the bending there. Whatever pushed up the layers is gone now. Obviously the layers to the north of the fault (left in the diagram) were at one time separated from the layers to the south by a significant distance, and I couldn't see a way that might have happened. The Internet seems to be sparse on information about the Hurricane Fault, maybe someone can provide some information on how this happened.But it wasn't caused by a volcano. The most I can make out of the diagram was that there was some significant uplift and mountain building that caused the upward bending on both sides of the Hurricane fault, then the mountain range eroded away. Following that was a great deal more deposition, first of the Claron layer but then a great many more layers above that in order to bury it under great pressure. Following that was more erosion back down the to around Claron layer. The erosion on opposite sides of the Hurricane Fault must have been much different, since on the north side the Claron layer was deposited upon a discontinuity on tilted layers, while on the south side the Claron layer was deposited upon the Kairparowits where its sediments had no trouble conforming to this already tilted layer.But again, it wasn't a volcano behind the Hurricane Fault. The rise of magma through layers would have an influence in a roughly circular radius and would not cause a roughly east/west fault line and an uplift miles and miles away. I'm sure you could, but it wouldn't be based upon evidence, and it wouldn't be anything you've ever been able to convince anyone else of, including creationists. You've been very clear. Wrong, but very clear. Things that happen leave evidence behind. Find some evidence and then interpret it in ways consistent with the way we observe the world actually behaving.--PercyEdited by Percy, : AbE, add disclaimer about one of the images I used.

Where is your 100 million year figure coming from? Is that a claim from that website? I was only using their image as an example of a complex boundary between layers, in this case interbedding.If that image isn't a good example of interbedding let me know and I'll try to find another.--Percy

I used an image from a Biblical site thinking Faith might find it more credible as an example of interbedding, but it looks like I walked right into the middle of some creationist hanky panky. Take a look at this discussion from EvolutionFairyTale where this image was posted and critiqued in Message 21: The author of Message 21 noticed the white scattered about the canyon and thought it might be snow and that therefore the claims about interbedding between the Redwall and Mauv didn't really hold up.It's a little hard to tell, but if you look carefully you'll see that the image I posted is a cropped area of this same image. I didn't pay any attention to the labeling in that image, but obviously it is wrong. There could be no interbedding between the Mauv and any layer above because the top of the Mauv is an erosion layer that was once overlain by other ancient now-gone layers. The Wikipedia article on the geology of the Grand Canyon area says, "deep channels were carved on the top of the Muav Limestone," by either streams or marine scour. The top of the Mauv was obviously eroded down and could never have interbedded with any above layer.There could also be no interbedding between the top of the Temple Butte and the bottom of the Redwall because the top of the Temple Butte is also an erosion interface.But hey, add a dusting of snow that selectively remains on some layers and not others and you can claim that the white layers are the Mauv interbedded with the Redwall.I'll add a note to the message where I posted the image.--Percy

You're just repeating your claim and not answering the question: Why do you expect more disturbances in the geological record than we actually find? Why wouldn't large undersea regions go for millions of years without experiencing a volcano? As I said before, most of the world's surface does not and never did contain a volcano, and a volcano under the ocean (remember, we're talking about marine layers) can influence only a much smaller surface area than on land because the lava cools very rapidly and there's no ash blown miles up into the atmosphere.Also, once more, volcanoes are an expression of tectonic and magma forces, not a cause of them. Volcanoes can contribute lava and ash to layers, but magma rising through geologic layers causes very little deformation because it melts through them like a red hot poker. Examine the vertical magma intrusion on the left side of this image again and note the complete lack of deformation around it: Magma pushing up through layers and eventually forming a volcano at the surface does not cause much if any bending or deformation of layers, except at the surface. The bending and deforming of buried layers is due to uplift and subsidence which is caused by tectonic forces. Well, yes, if a volcano occurred while a layer was forming then the lava and ash would tell us that a volcano occurred, so if there's no lava or ash then we conclude there was no volcano. But the geologic layers in this region of the US go on for miles and miles and miles, while the lava effect of a volcano is fairly local, especially under water, and there would be no ashfall such as would occur on land. Well, this should be an interesting story. How is it that you imagine a volcano caused deeply buried layers to tilt and form the Great Unconformity, and to do this hundreds of miles in all directions. Here's a diagram to help you with your explanation: Keep in mind that the Great Unconformity is huge in extent. The Grand Canyon is one place where it is exposed, but so is Frenchman Mountain in Nevada near Las Vegas, about 160 miles away, but of course the Great Unconformity extends for great distances in all directions. Parts of the Great Unconformity are also exposed all over the place, and a quick Google revealed examples in Utah, South Dakota and New York State. It's huge extent is why it's referred to as the Great Unconformity. Just how do you imagine this volcano at the Grand Canyon causing the Great Unconformity that extends beneath a great deal of what is now the US? By the way, Hutton found an equivalent unconformity in Scotland. Again, volcanoes by themselves do not cause uplift. The geologic history of the Grand Canyon does include uplift, but it was not caused by a volcano. Think about it. If volcanoes caused uplift, then there would be deformation upward of the layers immediately around that magma intrusion at the left of the diagram at the top of this message. But there's no such deformation, because the magma melted through. There will only be deformation upward when the magma reaches the surface layer, which has no overlying layers holding it in place.Also consider that any deformation a volcano might cause would be circular and centered at the volcano, but the majority of bending and folding and faulting is roughly linear. That's because tectonic forces are largely responsible, and the margins between tectonic plates tend to be roughly linear for very large distances, and where they curve it is often with huge radii. Glad you like it. Hopefully you'll think about its implications one day. Again, the uplift is far to the north of the magma intrusion and could not have caused the uplift. Had it caused uplift then the area around the magma intrusion would be highest, but it's not, and the layers where nearest the intrusion would have been deformed upward, but they're not. That's because, again, the magma melted through the layers without having to exert enough force to deform the layers. Also, again, were the magma intrusion responsible the uplift would have been circular, but it's not. It's roughly linear and stretches hundreds of miles east and west along the Hurricane Fault. It is in no way centered at the magma intrusion. You're simply repeating your claim again and not answering the question. Look again at the the diagram at the top of the message and notice how many magma intrusions were significant enough to deserve representation: just one. And how many significant bends do you see: maybe two or three. The question, again, is why you expect so many disturbances during a layer's formation? And what do you imagine they should look like, because we do find evidence of volcanic eruptions.About bending during layer formation, there will never exist any evidence of a sedimentary layer that resulted after an uplift. That's because once a region is uplifted it becomes an area of net erosion rather than net deposition.--Percy

I already pointed out in my previous message how a volcano local to the Grand Canyon could not possibly have caused the Great Unconformity that extends across much of the length and breadth of our continent, so I won't dwell on this further. You go on to say something that is an improvement in that it is less impossible: So let me interpret this as you setting aside the possibility that a volcano caused the Great Unconformity to instead consider the possibility that it was caused by uplift. How is it that you imagine uplift tilting the deeply buried layers of the Grand Canyon supergroup, and then creating an erosion layer on top of them just below the Tapeats Sandstone. Here's a diagram again to help you visually: Why do you require the strata to be broken up? As I keep telling you, on a scale of miles rock is very pliable. It's going to bend, not break. Where around the world have you ever heard it reported that volcanoes or earthquakes broke up sedimentary layers into little pieces that then begin eroding away at the enormous rate your scenario requires. You have the layers at the Grand Canyon being deposited by the flood, then remaining in place long enough to lithify into solid rock, then the layers being uplifted and broken up, then a mile or so of layers being eroded away to reveal the topography we see today, which is an unheard of rate of erosion in a region that gets little rain.One point I raised that you haven't addressed yet: most of the layers of the Grand Canyon are marine layers with fine-grained sediment. There are no land lifeforms in these layers, and there are none of the large particle sediment types associated with floods. Many of the layers are limestone, which is particularly finely grained.Let's say I believed you and wanted to be convinced by you, but I knew that floods don't lay down fine grained sediments, and I couldn't understand how a global flood could create layers containing only marine life. How are you going to help me past these obstacles without insulting my intelligence?--Percy

Hi Faith,I'll just accept it whenever you say you never said something. Whatever you want to claim you meant all along will be fine with me. But the tops of some layers are clearly eroded, so they must have been on the surface at some point. These are unconformities. Unconformities occur when an area of net erosion subsides sufficiently to become an area of net deposition.Also, the layers of the Grand Canyon are the same types of layers that we see forming all around the world today, and they form at the surface, either on land or on the seafloor (actually, much more often the seafloor because sediments accumulate at the lowest elevation, which in most regions is at the bottom of a body of water).Let me ask you to consider a possibility about your scenario. After the flood the area around the Grand Canyon was uplifted, then tectonic forces and earthquakes broke the layers up so that they could be easily eroded down to what we see today. How do you know it was a single uplift? How do you know it wasn't uplift with accompanying erosion, followed by subsidence with accompanying deposition, followed by another period of uplift with accompanying erosion. Wouldn't this help you explain why the boundaries between some layers are unconformities? Wouldn't explaining the unconformities be a better approach then simply denying their existence?--Percy

I'll treasure this moment always. My previous message contains detailed questions about this scenario so I won't take up space repeating them here.--Percy

Could be. Or they could have had independent causes. Or there could have been a sequence of events with complex histories. What evidence are you drawing upon in order to reach your conclusion? Could be. From what little I've read about it the Hurricane Fault is pretty complicated. I wouldn't jump to any conclusions. Yes! Could be. There's not enough evidence in the diagram to tell. Yes! Could be. Again, I don't think there's enough evidence in the diagram to assign an order of events at this level of detail. The diagram is a little hard to interpret on this point, but it appears that there's an additional unnamed layer above the Claron (not Clarion) to the north of the fault, and it sounds like you noticed that, too. But south of the fault it looks like the Claron is exposed at the top of Brian Head Peak and has no layer overlying it. I was not revising what I agreed with earlier about the Claron layer being deposited before the Hurricane Fault occurred, but you have no evidence to support the claim that nothing was deposited after the Hurricane Fault. But why do you care? What does it matter whether more layers formed after the fault or not? Whether more layers formed or not, they obviously eroded away. What difference does it make to you?--Percy

You've forgotten the discussion history. The image was supplied as an example of a boundary between layers that was not "knife-edged", which you claimed all boundaries were.Herebedragons was right to question the image, see my Message 188.--Percy

You mean she thinks the strata above the angular unconformity were greatly fractured so that they could settle into a flat form? Why? Weren't they already flat? Or does she believe they were previously tilted in line with the layers of the supergroup? But how would the even be possible because the extent of the above strata is hundreds of miles, so they could never have been tilted. I can't even ask an intelligent question about this one.Obviously I'm having trouble understanding Faith's position about how the angular unconformity happened, further clarification appreciated.--Percy

But this doesn't answer the question. Whether it was volcanoes or tectonics or something else, how did just a few deeply buried layers tilt without wreaking havoc on the bottom of the immediately overlying layer. You don't need particularly pliable rocks to bend on a scale of miles. When they don't bend you get a fault. You're inventing problems for yourself. Volcanoes are a surface feature. The magma intrusions just come from deeper within the Earth, not from subterranean volcanoes. When magma reaches the surface, then you get a volcano.You go on to describe the tilting of the supergroup layers into the Great Unconformity as if it were an event local to the Grand Canyon when portions of the Great Unconformity underlie much of the continent. What you describe happening had to take place in roughly uniform fashion all across the continent. And the Great Unconformity is an eroded boundary. It was once on the surface before all the overlying layers were deposited. You'd be recalling incorrectly. The Great Unconformity boundary is very irregular as a result of erosion, but the layers of the supergroup were very solid when the Tapeats was deposited. There is no mixing in evidence. Look at the diagram again: Look at the portion of the supergroup that underlies the Grand Canyon. You see the tan layer that extends up through the Tapeats? That bump of layer is there because it is harder than the other layers, so when these tilted layers were exposed on the surface the edges of the other layers eroded faster, leaving behind a lengthy range of mountains or hills formed by this edge of harder layer.(By the way, I want to note something that you got absolutely right. Note that where that harder layer sticks up into the Tapeats that the Tapeats just stops and butts up against it. This is because higher regions experience net erosion, while lower regions experience net deposition.)The bigger problem for your scenario is the question of where all the material from the supergroup went when it tilted. Look again at the portion of the supergroup beneath the Grand Canyon. Remember you claim it was originally horizontal when the overlying layers were deposited, so in the diagram it would have appeared as a rectangular block of horizontal layers. But now it's tilted and a big portion of the former rectangle is missing. Where did all the material go that is now sliced off? The Great Unconformity received this name because it is so huge in extent across the continent, so if the tilting occurred while it was buried, where did all the missing material go? Why wasn't it pushed up into the above layers?About the upper layers of an uplifted region fracturing while lower layers stay intact, it can happen, but not to anything like the degree you imagine. Rock on this scale is very pliable. Take a half-inch dowel a foot long and try to bend it. It will bend, but not really visibly. Now take a half-inch dowel a yard long and try to bend it. It bends as much per foot as before, but now over the longer distance you can see it. It's the same for rocks. You can't visibly bend a granite rock, say a flat piece of granite for your front step, but lengthen it to a mile and it will bend plenty. Plus realize that layers are not made up of miles long and wide pieces of solid rock. They're not monolithic.If you're thinking that you need the rock of the upper layers to break up so it can be eroded away quickly, then look again at the above diagram. The flatter region in the middle eroded very nearly as much as the uplifted region of the Grand Canyon. The equally flat region to the north of the Vermillion Cliffs eroded a little less. The highly bent layers just to the south of the Hurricane layer should be full of compression fractures by your thinking, but they're not, and despite all the bending they've been eroded much less than any other area of the diagram. This is because erosion is due to other factors than you're imagined breaking up of upper layers. Your scenario has layers that turn to rock because of the pressure of a great many layers above them. Turning to rock takes time, so we can eliminate the flood that created the layers as also causing the erosion, because the flood lasted less than a year. So you're proposing huge lakes. But you need water to not only create the Grand Canyon, you also need enough water to erode through a mile of layers all across the western US. After your flood waters recede, you can't store enough water in upland lakes to do that. A year's worth of rain might erode a mountain top by an inch, so to erode a million square miles of land down a mile you'd need more water than you could ever store on the continent. What you'd need to do is to reuse the water over and over again, say by rain followed by evaporation followed by rain followed by evaportion, and do this year after year for millions of years. For layers that haven't yet become rock, once the overlying layers are eroded away they'll never become rock. Rock doesn't form by drying out like mud might become bricks. Making sedimentary deposits into rock requires great pressure. Again, you need time for sedimentary deposits to become rock. You can't have the flood both deposit and erode the same layers if you need to wait for those layers to turn to rock. Again, the flood lasted less than a year. Every once in a while it's worth calling to your attention the lack of evidence for your scenario. There's no evidence of "fountains" anywhere, nor any evidence of a great marine die-off 4500 years ago. Those layers that geologists believe are marine contain marine life. Those layers that geologists believe are terrestrial contain land life. The layers at the Grand Canyon are both marine and terrestrial, and some of the topmost layers are marine. You need to adjust your scenario to account for this, plus this scenario makes no sense anyway. The terrestrial life living around the current location of the Grand Canyon at the time of the flood would have greatly outnumbered marine life washed in later from oceans hundreds of miles away. All around the world, the deeper and older the layer, the more any fossil life contained within differs from modern forms. There's nothing about a flood that could account for this.--Percy

But if you deduced this then I must be wrong when I said you have no evidence. From what evidence did you deduce that the now missing strata above the Claron were all deposited before the Hurricane Fault? There's certainly nothing in the diagram to suggest this. Okay, but realize that you did post five replies to my Message 114. When someone posts me a message I usually reply, so you might want to keep that mind the next time you feel moved to reply over and over again to the same message.--Percy