Earth science curriculum tailored to fit wavering fundamentalists

One of the guys at TR dug up a cross-section map of the St. Peter, advertised by YECs as having incredible uniformity. There's millions of distinct and different layers.

Thanks JohF.I didn't know you hung out over at TR. A few years back some silly work of mine resulted in the largest and longest TR science thread ever (DDWFTTW).JB

To make a quick reply, the idea is that the rate of deposition can vary, but it would be surprising indeed - at least to geologists - to interpret a massive formation like the Redwall as being due to a single event.But my main point is this: it is wrong to describe the Redwall Limestone as being "all Redwall Limestone" when it is in fact a mix of varying limestones, dolomites and chert.
The Redwall Limestone is composed of distinct "members", and even those are not uniform. here is a description of the actual composition - perhaps a bit technical but it does make it clear that even the individual members are not homogenous.

There are other places in the canyon where it looks a lot more homogeneous, but be that as it may, taking your information as correct, there is still a huge oddness to this, to the idea that any deposition of sediments as a unit, whatever its composition, could represent a time period of hundreds of millions of years. What is needed is an explanation of the mechanics of this deposition, how it fits into the time frame and so on. How come there is so much basic similarity to all the strata for instance, deposition or depositions that each represent hundreds of millions of years of a particular identified time period that of course vary in depth but not greatly, maintaining an appearance of general similarity even though they represent separate time periods of hundreds of millions of years each. Where is the detailed discussion of the mechanics of the deposition, the explanation for how one time period came to an end and the next began and so on. And would you please acknowledge that as a representation of the history of this planet this whole sequence of sediments, each identified as a unit unto itself with its own fossil contents or lack of them, with an identifiable start and stop, is really very strange?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Hundreds of millions of years is an exaggeration, so let's not worry about that.Limestone is especially easy to explain - because so much of it is biogenic. So long as the organisms producing it keep on going there will be sediment to deposit.Really, the mechanisms of deposition aren't believed to be any different from those operating today. And so long as conditions remain similar, why shouldn't the material deposited also remain similar ?

OK 540 million years for the whole geo column from Cambrian to present.Well, you're going to stick to your story and deny the obvious strangeness of the idea that current processes could at all represent those that built the geo column, or the strangeness of the idea that different time periods are represented by identifiable different blocks of sedimentary rocks. Oh well.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The fact that it's only 540 million years to the Cambrian supports my point. No single formation is likely to occupy more than a third of that.And I'm certainly not going to reject scientific conclusions just because you find them "strange" for some unexplained reason. I find Relativity and Quantum Mechanics to be much stranger, and I'm still happy to accept them.

Well I wish somebody would acknowledge the strangeness. It's hard to put into words any better than I have done already, but some honest contemplation of the facts should make it apparent. There is just no way to rationally explain how discreet time periods over the history of the earth got marked by clearcut sediment depositions that start at the beginning of the period and end at the end of it.

What strangeness?It would be strange for us to find a dinosaur dying in one of today's waterholes.Is it strange to find the sediment being deposited at the current ocean floor being ocean sediment?Is it strange to find sand dunes being created over what once was verdant forest?Is it strange to find mountains being eroded down or land flooded and then built up and river channels getting deeper?Things that get buried today are those things that are alive today.Geological layers are made of those things that exist today.Weathering happens.Gravity works.High spots get worn down and the debris fills the low spots.Low spots sometimes get forced up, even to becoming mountains.And that is the stake through the heart of the young earth zombie.We do find evidence of the same geological structures, so similar that they must have once been one, now separated by oceans.We do find fossils of stuff that once lived in layers where there are NO fossils of stuff that is now living.We do find structures that show cyclical layering, sometimes millions of cycles.And there has never been any model, method, process or procedure that can explain what is seen that does not also require long, long, long periods of time. Edited by jar, : fix sub-title

What you are imagining is quite strange but it isn't the reality - the rocks are not is neat and tidy as you think. Not nearly. Now, the geological periods are based on the rocks, but not because there are sudden closely synchronised changes in the rock being deposited on a global basis. (This is even more true of subdivisions of the major periods which are NOT recognised globally). Rather, there are global changes affecting the environment which, by my understanding, have a more gradual effect.In reality the iridium layer produced by the meteorite strike at the end of the Cretaceous was something of a gift for geologists because it did provide a precise marker for the end. Something that the rocks otherwise did not provide.

But they are a lot more neat and tidy than they should be in any case. In fact they shouldn't be at ALL neat and tidy really, there shouldn't be ANY correlation between the beginning and end of identifiable sedimentary rocks and the beginning and end of identifiable time periods with their supposedly peculiar flora and fauna. There is absolutely nothing to make sense of that on the OE model. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

From The St. Peter Sandstone | The Institute for Creation Research, John Morris' map of the St Peter: Which seems to include any roughly contemporaneous sandstone, because the St. Peter definitely does not go onto the Canadian Shield. From Just a moment...: And from High-Resolution Sequence Stratigraphic Analysis of the St. Peter Sandstone and Glenwood Formation (Middle Ordovician), Michigan Basin, U.S.A., a cross section: {In preview the images show for an instant and then disappear. Percy, WTF?}Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

Since the periods are identified from the rocks, and since they represent the effects of global changes, and since they are not at all precise where the boundary is actually present I am at a loss to see anything actually strange.Perhaps you could point to a genuinely strange example ? Let's have something we can clearly look at instead of arguments based on the way you think things are.

The north wall of the Grand Canyon where it is most neat and regular as seen from the south rim.

That tells me nothing. Be precise. Which boundaries between formations represent strange correlations with geological periods, and why do you think so ?