Summations Only

It sure is a relevant thread. The earth is very, very old. This is the thread to discuss it.

Yet what you claim is a lie explains all the evidence seen in reality and is supported by every branch of science and every investigative method and by every new technology that is developed while the Biblical Flood cannot explain the ordering of biological samples found or the ordering of geological samples found or varves or marine sedimentation layers or multiple unconformities or alternating terrestrial and marine environments or buried fossil sand dunes or really anything.Edited by jar, : add ordering of

Not many posts since yesterday, here are some observations and suggestions:

1. They may have gone unnoticed, but I did issue a few very short suspensions over the past week. Please refrain from personal comments and concentrate your attention on the topic.
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2. Neither the Flood nor the Bible are the topic.
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3. In Message 1067 Faith explained that evolutionary change is why she believes that "Millions of years would simply wipe out all living things." But as noted in Message 1069, Faith's reasons provided no support for the assertion that evolutionary change causes life to die away. For example, the lizards of Pod Mrčaru have changed on a human time scale from their ancestors on Pod Kopite but show no signs of dying away.
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   But more importantly this is a geological thread, not an evolutionary one. I assumed Faith had a geological cause in mind that would wipe out all life after millions of years, something related to her earlier claim that a region of net deposition would eventually become uninhabitable. If she has no geological justification then the argument that millions of years would wipe out all life should be dropped from this thread.
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4. From Faith's Message 1071:
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   Faith in Message 1071 writes:

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   jar writes:

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   The nearly 40 major sedimentary rock layers exposed in the Grand Canyon and in the Grand Canyon National Park area range in age from about 200 million to nearly 2 billion years old.

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   See, just flat-out statement as if it were fact. It isn't fact and it can't be fact,...As I pointed out there isn't the slightest observable evidence in the strata of any degree of difference in age whatever.
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   This subtopic is more appropriate for a thread in the Dates and Dating forum, but the part about not being a fact is deserving of some attention. At the Grand Canyon it is fact that the proportions of various radiometric elements vary in a consistent and ordered fashion from layer to layer, and great age along with increasing age with depth is a scientific explanation that fits the facts. Faith isn't being asked to accept the facts or the conclusions, just understand them. Merely denigrating them and casting aspersions accomplishes nothing. If she wishes to challenge any facts or conclusions she must bring her own facts and/or counterarguments.
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5. From Faith's Message 1071:
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   Faith in Message 1071 writes:

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   The "oldest" layers have no more signs of decrepitude than "younger" layers, no more erosion, no more appearance of any kind of breakdown or sagging or dissolution whatever, no more crumbling or surface erosion, nothing at all.
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   This hasn't received any attention, but it deserves some. There seem at least several things about basic geology that Faith is missing here.
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6. From Jar's Message 1072:
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   Jar in Message 1072 writes:

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   Faith writes:

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   Bla bla bla bla bla. The "warm shallow seas" are determined by the sediment of the rock and perhaps fossil contents. If the sediment was simply transported and dumped you'd never figure it out would you?

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   Of course we would which is how all of the known flood deposits have been identified. Floods do leave evidence Faith and what floods don't do is sort materials and biological samples the way things exist in reality.
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   Faith didn't address this part of Jar's reply, but it deserves additional attention. Why does Faith believe that layers deposited beneath warm shallow seas would look the same as what a flood "transported and dumped"?
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7. From Faith's Message 1080:
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   Faith in Message 1080 writes:

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   This isn't the thread for it but if you want to start another to defend your contention that what you are calling a delta was ever really a delta, and why it matters whether it was a delta or not, I'd be interested.
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   This thread would be fine for this discussion.

The explanation is actually twofold, first to point out that the oldest layers do show their age and the second to remind you that weathering and erosion only happen at the surface.Lets address the first. The oldest layers show that they have undergone metamorphism and the actual composition of the rocks has changed. The composition of the final product can also give additional information; the presence of particular mineral crystals can show the temperature that existed. Metamorphism happens at temperatures between 150C (over 300 degrees F) to around 200C (392 degrees F) which are temperatures not found at the surface. High pressure is also required, about 1500 BAR (over 20,000 pounds per square inch) which again simply never happens at the surface. A third indicator of age are the presence of intrusive magma; an intrusion must be younger than the surrounding material.The second issue is related. Erosion and weathering happen only at the surface. Things that are buried cannot erode or weather. It is only after the oldest rocks are formed, then buried, then undergo metamorphism and then ALL of the overlying material weathered and eroded away to bring the oldest rocks back to the surface that they can get weathered and eroded. That means the material had to first get buried far enough to undergo metamorphism and then additional time to raise the whole column up and erode and weather away all the overlying material that we can expect to see any signs of erosion on the oldest rocks.All that takes extremely long periods of time. It really is that simple.Edited by jar, : that ----> than

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At the Grand Canyon it is fact that the proportions of various radiometric elements vary in a consistent and ordered fashion from layer to layer, and great age along with increasing age with depth is a scientific explanation that fits the facts

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I believe that this is an oversimplification - generally sedimentary rocks are not datable by radiometric methods. The dates are obtained from igneous rocks, and the age of sedimentary rocks is inferred from the relationship between rocks.Edge's point about intrusions being younger than the rocks that they intrude into is relevant for this reason. If an intrusion is dated, we know that the surrounding rock must be older.But this still does not change the fact that the dates are based in observable evidence - much of it quite obviously so. But what can we expect of someone who calls the order in the fossil record - which is clearly an observable fact - an "illusion" without explains how that could even be possible ?

Nonsense, I have never told anyone what they should believe. Why must it be 'proved' to you?Now it sounds like you are telling me what I should believe. Again, nonsense. If someone came along with a better idea than evolution that explains the fact, I would embrace it so fast it would make your head spin.Can you say the same thing about your beliefs?

Well, if things are that far off, then it shouldn't work. At least not in my world. You are being silly here.

Oh, I certainly noticed that statement.I'm not sure what Faith means by 'decrepitude', but I might say just the opposite.Most old rocks are still around because they are much more strongly lithified or metamorphosed than younger rocks.The 'decreptitude' of a rock has more to do with weathering than anything else. In other words, a young rock that has been exposed to weather can be just as, or more decrepit than an older rockAnd yes, I feel pretty adept at telling the age of a sedimentary rock by looking at it, particularly if it is in the field.So, I would say that Faith is wrong in more than one way with this statement.

Epistemopathy. That’s a term that was used by a "maverick" psychologist back in the sixties with the wit and the insight to expose the field of Psychology as generally sick with "epistemopathology, " suffering from symptoms that would in any other context be considered schizophrenia. The term just popped into my head to describe historical geology. Psychology of course is an interpretive science that can't be proved, just as historical geology is (not physical geology, but historical geology), and although I don't recall that fact being described as such, it has to be the cause of the tendency to dogma in any scientific context about stuff that can't be known, only interpreted. (No, you do NOT see "sand dunes" in a rock. You see a rock with sand grains that follow a particular pattern. No you do NOT see a 'delta" in a rock: you see certain chemical and physical properties that you associate with that sort of environment.)The problem with that Wikipedia dogma is that it treats interpretations as facts, but then that's what all the historical/interpretive sciences do. It reifies them, that's another word for the epistemopathy involved. Why can't *science* just honestly describe the observed phenomena and stop mistaking interpretation for fact? The assumptions of Old Earthism are bad enough, but there are worse examples when you get into descriptions of evolution based on fossils.Yes I suppose I should go look some up. Oh I know I should, and in another frame of mind I could list dozens, but sorry, right now my head hurts, my eyes hurt. I couldn't get anyone to see any of this anyway. What is needed is a maverick geologist (or evolutionary biologist) who can properly diagnose the epistemopathy. Since I'm not a geologist my efforts are a lost cause.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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It's more than denial. That dogmatic declarative way of telling us what we're supposed to believe, about something that couldn't possibly be proved although it's mere science, ought to be rejected by all, including you. It's an abuse of language and intelligence and even you should see that. It's a bamboozle, it's a way of forcing us to believe something without any effort even to try to persuade us. It's one thing to preach God, since there's nothing else that one can do but preach God, it's another to preach Science as if it were God, especially considering all those sanctimonious appeals to Evidence you all aiffirm.

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You seem to be demonstrating yet another species of epistemopathy though I'm not sure what to call it. Confusion of revelation with science perhaps?

Once again, that is simply a truly silly assertion. No honest person could confuse a Wiki with dogma; particularly when a Wiki entry is subject to constant public review and editing. In fact it is the complete opposite (as is science) of dogma.Perhaps you do not know what dogma is Faith. Again, that is simply a truly silly assertion. The observations actually exist. The fossils exist. The fossils exist in the geological samples. The geological column does demonstrate superposition. The absolute and relative age readings and tests exist. they are all facts Faith, none are suppositions. Yet you cannot and have not been able to show why any assumptions are bad or why any facts are not as presented.

So, we should just ignore that pattern? So then, all you need to do is prove that the interpretations are not factual.Why aren't you doing that?Hey, all YECs say the same thing, but no one does anything about it. So, have your professional creationists let you down? This shouldn't be your job.Why haven't they laid all this out so that you could slay the old earth dragon?In fact, why aren't they here in the first place?

As Heinlein noted a few decades back:

Piling up facts is not science--science is facts-and-theories. Facts alone have limited use and lack meaning; a valid theory organizes them into far greater usefulness. To be valid a theory must be confirmed by all the relevant facts...

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A powerful theory not only embraces old facts and new but also discloses unsuspected facts.

Every fact about the observable world is an interpretation.Nobody - not even you - sticks to purely relaying fact without interpretation.So - at best - your claim simply amounts to the assertion that the evidence is insufficient to justify conclusions - inevitably conclusions you don't like.But the claim needs to be justified. Simply dressing it up with labels is far from adequate. Especially coming from someone who has severe problems presenting rational arguments.Indeed, the whole diagnosis is - an extremely dubious - interpretation presented as fact.