All that evidence for the Old Earth in all the sciences is mostly just plausibilities, interpretations of observations, suppositions, assumptions, hypotheses and so on. There's a lot of it so it looks like a lot of *evidence* -- which it is of course if you count plausibilities, interpretations of observations, assumptions, hypotheses and so on as evidence. Which again, is all anyone's got for the prehistoric past.
What we actually have is evidence, and interpretation and analysis of evidence. The "plausibilities,...,suppositions, assumptions, hypotheses" stuff is all on your side of the fence.
I'm sorry you don't see the obvious. Old Earthers have had more time to accumulate your web of interpretations but that's all it is, a web of interpretations, plausibilities, suppositions, assumptions and hypotheses.
For example, we know how sand is deposited in deserts and along coastlines because we observe it happening today.
Oh sure there are lots of such facts, and they're available to me just as to you. But the theory that any particular observation in the present applies to the past is just a supposition that can't be proved, which may be plausible or not.
And we know that the sandstone in geological layers was deposited in the same way because analysis reveals it has the same composition, structure and types of fossils as sedimentary sand deposits forming today.
In order to come to that conclusion you have to ignore the fact that you are comparing hilly piles of loose sand to a gigantic square hunk of lithified rock. But I doubt your fossil claim too.
You, on the other hand, claim a Flood that does things that no flood anywhere has ever done, and that no one can conceive could happen using natural processes.
More like no one WANTS to conceive of it so you find all kinds of objections to it. And really, this constant refrain about other floods is ludicrous, should have been given up long ago in this debate. The worldwide Flood was a rising of the oceans over all the land on the planet. To compare it to a local flood is just plain insane. Stop it.
You claim this is a Flood as has never been seen before and that it could nonetheless do these things, but now you are way beyond even "plausibilities, suppositions, assumptions, hypotheses" and into the realm of fiction.
"Now?" Since when? My reasoning is based on the facts available. You start with the Biblical fact that there WAS a worldwide Flood, you follow with the calculations based on the Biblical time indicators so you know roughly when it occurred. This comes from God Himself so anything science says that contradicts it has to be excluded. But that much doesn't even have to be stated in a science discussion unless forced, because there are scientific facts that don't challenge God and do support such an event, such as the huge strata and the huge number of fossils. Explaining all that on Old Earth assumptions is the weird fictional stuff. And boy are those explanations weird.
Walther's Law is about rising sea level, not waves, tsunami-sized or not.
You still misunderstand Walther's Law. Walther's Law is about a depositional environment moving across a landscape. It could be the riverbank of a meandering river or the coastline of a transgressing/regressing sea. Both are examples of Walther's Law in action.
Sigh. Which is exactly what the Flood would have brought about, as I keep saying.
If you read the Wikipedia Section on Walther's Law you'll see that it describes it as "when a depositional environment 'migrates' laterally". This could refer to a coastline that moves inland or out to sea with the depositional environments of that coastline moving with it, or to the banks of a meandering river whose depositional environments moves back and forth across the landscape with the changing course of the river.
Well, the Flood was no river, but it was the rising of the sea level, moving the coastline inland and then out again. There's nothing wrong with applying Walther's Law to this scenario.
It order for a depositional environment to deposit the significant amounts of sand, silt, mud, clay, calcium carbonate remains and mid-ocean ooze that we see in the sedimentary record, that environment has to persist in one place for quite some time.
Sure, "quite some time" but that could be months, not millions of years. This is just one of those assumptions, hypotheses, suppositions etc. You haven't seen this and you have no idea how long it would take. You just assume that it takes whatever time fits into the Old Earth scenario. There is nothing whatever to justify such an assumption. A year is really quite a long time for the entire earth to be flooded.
The ocean deposits sand on beaches every day. Rivers deposit sediments in deltas every day.
That's why the transgression onto or regression from a landscape has to be gradual, otherwise there's no time for significant deposits to form.
Again you are simply assuming the amount of time needed since nobody has ever witnessed this and what IS witnessed as occurring today does occur a lot more rapidly than you seem to be willing to apply to your scenario-- beach sand, river delta etc. Rivers often change course due to sedimentation build-up in a matter of a hundred years, not hundreds of millions, and that means the sedimentation is occurring daily. The Flood would have involved ocean water incredibly full of sediments from the scouring off of the land.
The runoff from land has to feed the depositional environments with the raw material that it sorts by density and grain size. The heaviest material, sand, can fall out of suspension in the active water of waves, and so we find sand at the interface between between land and ocean, and the activity of the waves provides additional weathering that produces more sand. A little further off the coast we find mud, silt and clay sediments that consist of smaller and lighter particles and that require quieter water to fall out of suspension. Further off the coast if the environment is suitable the carbonate skeletons of microorganisms will accumulate, and otherwise there will be only mid-ocean ooze.
The Flood waters would have been thick with sediments of all sorts.
Walther's Law is definitely not about a flood moving across a landscape, even a global flood.
Try rising sea level instead of "flood," which is a more accurate picture of the actual situation.
Once the world is flooded no water is moving in any significant way and there are no higher elevations from which sediments can be supplied.
Once the water is full of sediments they just keep being deposited on the land, you don't need a further supply. And ocean water doesn't stop moving. It has temperature levels and currents, and tides don't stop when the land is covered, though exactly how they would move under those circumstances is an interesting question.
You think the sediments would come from the scoured landscape, but floods do not scour landscapes, only fast flowing water does that, and fast flowing water only occurs in confined waterways.
Oh for crying out loud, Percy. The first stage of the Flood was forty days and nights of heavy rain. Have you ever seen a heavy rain that only lasts a few days? It swells rivers and soaks hills and causes enormous mudslides in just that short period of time. One day of heavy rain where I live, an event that only happens every decade or so, fills the walled walkway in front of my door with water up to the threshold and the mud collected is a real problem for the clean-up crew. In the early stage of the Flood the water would run from the higher parts to the lower parts, pretty fast-flowing water one would assume, and ALL OVER THE LAND EVERYWHERE, millions of fast-flowing rivers. What ARE you thinking?
Floods spread out across landscapes and move slowly.
Itty bitty little local floods are no comparison, are you never going to recognize this? In a worldwide Flood you would have hundreds of thousands of little local floods all converging from all directions.
But even a fast flowing tsunami does not scour a landscape, as we saw when the tsunami flooded across the Japanese landscape. About the best it did in the way of scouring was pick up a little beach sand and carry it a little bit inland.
And I've already answered this too. The main deposition would have occurred on the transgression and regression of the ocean water itself. Huge waves would have to have occurred somewhere in this process, though, because tides didn't stop and waves don't stop coming up over the land when there is still land for them to come up over. When the water was so heavy with sediments from the scouring, such a wave could have contributed quite a bit of deposition. You are just continuing to make inadequate comparisons.
YOu think it would have taken "geologic time" in the millions of years to lay down the sediments we see in the strata, I don't. Matter of plausibilities.
No, it is not a "matter of plausibilities.
It sure is, and that's a woefully inadequate bunch of plausibilities you've just outlined above.
There is nothing plausible about a global flood that has no source of sediment yet not only produces copious sedimentary layers into which it inserts undisturbed footprints, burrows and nests, it sorts them by type (but without regard to density and size), by degree of difference of fossils from modern forms, and by amount of radiometric decay products. Your ideas about the Flood fail on the simplest and most fundamental levels.
Yeah yeah yeah. Your utter inability to imagine the scale of such an event makes your criticism of my view ridiculous. "No source of sediments???" The entire land mass of all the continents put together down to bedrock isn't enough sediments? abe: Add to that the carbonates and calcareous ooze from the ocean itself that formed the limestones and that's a LOT of sediment. /abe
You can't prove how long it would have taken and neither can I,...
Au contraire, we *can* prove (that's "prove" in the scientific sense of providing evidence for one's theories) how long it would have taken because we can observe how slowly the same processes are happening today while building sedimentary layers identical in character to their lithified cousins deeper in the geologic column. In addition we have the radiometric data, and we have the fossils.
Sigh. You do NOT have evidence, you have plausibilities, which is amply shown already in this discussion alone as you so inadequately envision what you think would have happened. It's all imagination and yours is woefully out of scale. You are living in neverneverland if you think the layers being built today are even remotely similar in size to the Coconino, the Redwall, the Dover Cliffs, the tepui etc. And you keep comparing the volume of water to a local flood when a worldwide Flood begun with over a month of heavy rain would be made up of millions of such little floods all running together all at one time.
...but five months up and five months back seems like plenty of time to carry and dump sediments.
Here's yet another reason you're mistaken. Sedimentary layers are everywhere around the world. If the flood had truly carried sediments from one place to be deposited in another, then the places where the sediments came from should have no material left. Yet, as I said, sedimentary layers are everywhere. There is nowhere in your scenario from which the sediments could come.
Sigh. The denuded places would have been covered with deposited sediments, Percy, there would have been no such thing as a place where no material was left. The sediments would just have been carried in the water wherever they were carried, maybe even back where they came from in some cases, but all of them would have ended up on the land in any case. Put some dirt in a square glass dish, add water to a good depth, stir until it's all mixed together, let it settle. Are there any places it didn't settle? Did the exact same sediments settle where they were originally?
Oceans cover 3/4 of the globe, which is 3/4 of a global flood. There's nothing in today's oceans remotely similar to your claim of cubic miles and miles sediments being carried from one set of places hither and yon to another set of places in short periods of time.
You are way too literal about this idea of carrying from one place to another as if that means emptying one place to fill another when all it means is that the sediments got stirred up and redeposited all over the place. See example of glass dish above.
ABE: Here's an experiment. Find a flat rock. Put it in the center of a fairly large square flat pyrex dish, the bigger the better. sprinkle whatever sediments you can get together onto the rock, or make mud out of them and pack them onto the rock and let it dry or whatever. Then fill the dish with water to cover the whole rock. Stir up the water until it's all mixed, and let it settle. I wonder what would end up on the rock.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : grammar
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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