Since I gave some of my arguments against creationist biological views in the last couple of posts, might as well ow give an argument or two against the geological gcreationist view as well. Why not? Now I can have both Todd Wood and Paul Garner rolling their eyes and snarling at me in my everactive imagination.
For this topic I rely heavily on one cross section of the area from the Grand Staircase in Utah south throught the Grand Canyon in Arizona, a couple hundred miles I think. It shows all the strata to a depth aof almost two miles I think, on the north eled and up tot the Permian or about a mile at the south end. It shows the cliffs tat the top left that form the Grand Staricase with its canyons, and it shows the Grand canyon cut into a mounded area at the other end, as well as the Great Unconformity beneath theGrand Canyon and a volcano on the far notrth end.
jI first used this cross section to argue that there is nop disturbance to the strata during their long millions of years, to prove that they couldn't be time periods on this very active planet with such a calm history, but now that I've heard from the creatinoists that great tectonic activity is supposed to have occurred during the Flood, which according to creationists is when the strata were laid down, this answers that idea as well. There is simply no hnint toof the kind of bashing and crashing they desdribe during the period of the laying down of the sedimentary layers. None. There they are, all laid out obviously originally hoizontal and originally straight.
They are only slightly move from their horigonatal straight position on the crsos section, as the entire block of land is show n to have been uplifted on the north, from which it inclines downward to the Grand Canyon area, interruptyed there by that mounded area where the land is pushed up above the Grat Unconformity, while the strata remain in place all as one unit or block over that mound. This clearly shows that the tectonic upheaval that lifted the land on the north and made that mound on the right occurred after the strata were all in place, not during or before it. The strata follow the contour of the entire land area. You may be able to find the cross section at Grand Canyon Escalanate National Park, but the last time I found it they'd put some notes ove it which to my mind makes it less valuable as a resource although the main information may still be available.
The fact that there was no tectonic disturbance until all the strata were in place has implications first of all for the theory of evolution, since if you can get tyhat much disturbance in our time how could it have happened that it never occurred during those muillions upon millions of years as the so called time periods were passing over the surface of the planet?
But now it has implications as well for the creatijnist view of the tectonic activity that they think occurred during the Flood. Surely it would have disturbed the strata during their laying down if that had been the case no? But there is no sign of such disturbance. ALL the disturbance to be seen on this cross section clearly occurred AFTER the strata were all in place from Cambrian to Holocene.
Not only was the land uplifted as described abov after the strata were all in place, but the volcano erupted afterward, as can be seen in the fact that the magma rises from the ery bottom of the stack to the fvery top at the far left. One straight line of magma from bottom to top. The volcano erupted AFTER the strata were in place and the magma rose up through ALL the strata that were already there.
The upligting of the land to the north is no doubt what caused the breaking up of the land that created the cliffs that became the Grand Staircase, washing away whatever was loosened probably in the receding Vlood waers. The upper strata were all washed away down to the Permian lahyewr from the bottom cliff of the Staircase through the Grand Canyon area. The Grand Canyon itself I figure was cut at the same time as the mounding of that area aoccurred, also after the strata were all in place. I figure the uppermost layers would have been strained by the mounding and started breaking up and washing away and that's when the canyon was cut into the south side of the mounded area.
So from all this I also conclude that the Great Unconformity formed after the strata were all in place as well, being as I think the diagram clearly shows, the ause of that mounding up in the Grand Canyon area above it. Tectonic formces pushed strata beneath the Cambrian layer into that tilted position at that point and that pushed the whole bllcick of strata lying overhead into the mounted form, into which the canyon broke as a result of the strain on the upper layers from the mounding. That's my theory.
I get a lot more out of this crosss section than just these points but I think they are enough to bget across why I don't accewpt the idea that there was a lot of tectonic activity during the Flood. There is simply no evidence for it on the cross section.
Of course I suppose you can always say it's the cross section's fault, it's just an artists's rendition after all.
faithswindow@mail.com
Later. I can't read the notes on the cross section at that Grand Staircase website but I'm now suspecting that they may say there's something wrong with the way it is drawn, correcting something in such a way as to make my argument fail. I guess Ill find out eventually but I'm going to trust the original rendition anyway. It had to have been based on clear enough information for it to have been presented as it was.
Anyway, whaty I wanted to add here is tht although what I'm saying may be clear enough based on this cross section, it isn't so clear when you look at other locations. This area is unique for the preservation of the geological column in its original form nd exposed to view over large distances. You can see the same sequence in core samples from other parts of the earth, many in the midwet area of the US for instancek, so that is the same kind of evdence, it's just no exposed to public view. Otherwise whereve you find parts of the geological column exposed that's all it is, parts of it and ovfen small parts, just a few layers broken off from the stack, often twisted into tight circles by tectonic pressure, bucked to form mountains in such a way that the uppermost layers have all been jolted off . So you just don't find the whole column as neatly exposed anywhere else as in the Grand Canyon Grand Staricase area.
I think iI pointed out two other examples in a fairly recent post, cross sections of England and Tennessee, which show pices of layers from the column broken off and thrown down in a line from one part of the land to the other end. They occur in the order foud in the geological column everwhere, starting with the cambrian and proceeding uprward through Devonian, Silurian, Carbinaceous, Permian, Mesozoid and so on to recne ttime or cenozoidc. They lie tilted along the path where they fell bur t in that order. So what that does is show that , again, the disturbance happened after they were all in place. We aren't seeing a particular layer having been broken or damaged, we're seeing the whole column thrown down as a unit in the order of its original laying down. Whatever threw it all down like that occurred after it was all in place.
In many places we only find part of the columnm, but I'm convinced enough by the examples I've given that wherever they are found they were disturbed after all were in place, even if that distrubance did away with parts of the column which can give a different imporession about when things happen. And of course that is how evolutionists interpret many of those locations. Each is interpreted as occurring in its own unique way and demonstrating disturbances at many different levels of the whole.
qwll, here's my outlandish theory about it all, so you can roll your eyes and laugh again. I think there was one digigantic tectonic jolt that occurered right at the point that the Flood started draining away after sitting there quietly for a few months as described in Genesis, eight I think. I think this tectonic event tribggered the receding of the Flood waters. I also think it is the jolt that spearated the single continent Pangaea tinoto the separate continents we now have cross the planet, and began their drifitng apart. Although I think they probably started out drifintg much faster in the beginning it still waasn't the riproarig movement pictured by Paul Garner as having happened during the Flood, it was maybe a few feet per day. I worked it all out once and that calculation is no doubt somewhere on my blogs but I've ost track of it all by now and don't remember the figures I'd arrived at, just that although it was faster than now for sure if you'd stood on the shore of osme of the contientns yo'd have seen the other wone drifintg away for quite a long time, months at least, maybe even years. I worked out some distances over time and it seemed to me that when the Vikings explored the Atlantic they didn't have aas much distance to tralvel to get to Greenland as they would now, and the distance wouwas quite significant as I recall, but again I don't remember numbers. I also pictured the Mediterranean sea opinion up, starting out narrow and widening north to soulth ove time, which affects some historical events I discuss that I also don't remember any wmore. Gosh, how helpful I am.
So I have a very differnt model from Garner's, and maybe most other creationists as wellj. The floating debris idea of how animals got from the ark to the Americas from Europe isn't necessary in my scenario because the Americas just werren
't all tht far waway in gthe first years after the Flood, even the first hundred while the animals were spreading out over the Earth. IN fact when I prayed about it and the idea of the continental shelves came to mind, which I have to take as God's answer, or at least say it might have been God's answer, anyway that idea makes sense, especially when I did som eresearch and fou d iout that those shelves stretch an enomrous distance into the Atalantic ocean, and that there was a tiem when they were exposed above the water too, making it a very easy matter for animals to just walk across from one ocontinent to the toher. that was a very crecnet idea. I hadn't really thought uch about that problem before it came up on Lets's Talk Creation.
I've got some other outlandish ideas based on the scenario I'm laying out here but I've spelled them out i other places and what I've said here seems to be enough for now. But of coursae if I think of anything that I really shouild have added I'll come back and do just that.
faithswindow@mail.com
Oh, perhaps I should mention tha when I first gave some thought to the ice age I also came up with something different from the creationists as presented by the Let's Talk Creationi duo. Of course. Sigh. I was respodning to the common complaint that the Flood itself and the splitting of the continents would have generated so much heat that the whole lplanet would have just burned up or at least the ark and everybody on it would have gone poof and that would have been the end of that. As I was ponderibng it I pictured something like the canopy in the atmosphere that now is debunked as for some reason impossible although it had been enteretained for some time. I never followed any of that and hadn't thought about the atmosphereic or moisture canopy at all until this point. But if it rained for forty days and nights continuously over all the earth there had to have been an awful lot of moisture stored up there somehow or soother and the canotpy idea seems to me rto be as good an idea as ahyny or better. Yes I understand problems with it, making it too hard to see the sun and moon for instance. Obviojsly there are problems. But anyway I pictured all this water held up there raining down on the earth over that long period of time and leaving the atmosphere... empty. No more canopy, no more water above the firmament.
Freezing the flood ater in the arctic regions particularly before it had drained away.
jAnd the earth heating up enormously. So what I picturesd was this heat just rising up rapidly , vapor from all the oceans of course, or the one great ocean now covering the earth, and just radiating rapidly out into space. Whoosh. That would have clollooled down the planet enormously very fast. Bringing on the idece age. That's how I thought of it . Sort of like a giant airconditionaer. Removing the heat and icing up the panet.
The other theory is that the vapor caused it to rain which came down as snow and began the ice age. OK. I'm sure there are problems with my theory. But I'm also pretty such there are problems wwith this one too.
Saturday March 14 Just went tot he grand staircsase site and found that cross section and see that I got it wrong. It inclines UNWRD from north to south, not the other way around. Thre is an upward curve to the north right at the very end of the formation but it dips sown right away and then there is the long incline upward toward the south. Oh well. I'm blind, what can I say. Anyway, I also note that they plastered one of their their information blocks right over the Grand Canyo so you can't see what I was describing about the mouning above the Great Unconformity. You can't see the Great Unconformity and you can't see the mounding and you can't see the canyon. Great. I wonder what was bother ing them abou thtat. Reminds me of current politics . Mustn't let anyone see anyting that disagrees with the party line. Whatever it might be in this case.
I hav some very small opies of that cross section but always wanted one larg enough to hang on my wall. Too late now I guess.
Come to think of it, mayb there's a copy or paetial copey somewhere in my blogs.
Anyway, I never really finished what I started about the great tectonic jolt I find illutrated on that cross section but borne out in many other ways. If it occurred at the very end of the Flood then that's when the continents started separating as Pangaea broke up. The movement would of course have started the subduction of sea floor at the far wenst of the Americas as the land was pushing in that direction, the movmeent would create earthquakes of course and open up volcanoes. So all that got scatarted my scenario at the very end of the Flood. it just looks that way on that cross section and the idea carries through many other examples I've pursued as well.
Maybe the most outlandish of my ideas based on this, as evolutioists see it for sure but maybe also creationists, is that I see the great teconic jolt as casing the Great Unfonformity, being a lateral force that pushed up broken pieces of the strata beneath the cmbiran layer into that layer, lifting the whole stack above it. But not only that unconformity but every angular unconformity ont he planet I think is to be explained by that oe great jolt at the start of the continental movement. Incliding sSIzzar point which I spent a fair amount of time studying at one point some years ago.
The starndard idea about the Great Unconformity is that it was there before the strata were laid down, as the root of a former mountain range that had eroded down to that level, on topiop of which those strata were ethen laid down, those strata that repreesent time periods of millions of years each. Which make ME roll my eyes. So as I contemplated that cross section I realized that no, the strata were alreadyy there and the Great Unconformity was force upward into them, pushing them upward into that mouneded shape, which is my explanatio for how the canyon got formed, by the strain on the uppermost layers crasking the layers that broke up and washed away down to the Permian level but also into a crack beneath that level, washing it all out and tumbling down the canyon to its exit in what is now the Gulf of California, forming the anyon itself. That's my way of interpreting the cross section.
But I also explain ALL the angular unfonformities as occurring at this time, created by that great jholt. What happens is the jolt is lateral, pushing the continebnts apart, lateral bneath a certainlevel. It forces the strata beneath that level into buckeled undulations which you can see in some kinds of mountains, incliuding the Alps an the ppalachians. This buckling of the strata occurs neath a higher level of the strata that remain horizonal and slide abofve the cuckled lower strata, or they slide along under that horizontal block. In most cases that upper block just breaks awpart and washed away, but in manyu places a single layer remains lying across the buckled lower strata, kind of as if glued there which may be a fair way of describing yhe situation. I think it's often betrween two sandstones, but at least one of the two is sandstone, which I think may have a slippery effect that makes it the most likely point for the two sections to separate. Anyway, that single layer atope the buckled layers is conventioanlly einterpreted as having been laid down after the lower strata were buckled. Ha ha. Well, that's what they think. And of course there were mayny more layers on top of that one, I'm sure of that myself. For one thing the weight of the upper block of layers would have facilitated the slicing of the buckled layers beneath the pint at which the sliding was most likely.
I hope Im being clear. I think the start of the tectonic movement was a gigantic worldwide jolt that got all the upheavals going at once, and forming all those angular unconformities is one of the results I think had to have happened. Buckling of strata beneat a heavy bloock of many horizontal layers, most of which or all in some cases, washed away probably by the receding flood waters and I think all thise may have occurred right at the height of the Flood and triggered its draining. There woudould have been many more layers above even the highest ones that still survive as in the Greand Staricase area, but they would have been softer and more easily broken up and washed away, while the lower you go in the stack the more stable it would become from the weight on it.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it. For now anyway. I think it is easily argued from that cross section and other sources and is the best explanation for all the things we are always triying to explain.
faithswindow@mail.com
Another thing but somethig that should be on the biological post so it's out of place here but anyway. I think it might have been Watchman Nee that got me thinking along these lines but anyway I remember the concern expressed at some oint on the creatinionist show that it would take a while for foot to grow after the Flood, but it's actually very likely that a great deal of the vitality God built in to the creationin remained in the pre Flood world and would have been availabiable right after the Flood bmaybe for a few generations before the weakening effects of the Fall took over. So that would mean that the animals on the ark, and the hunman beings, AND all teh seeds that would be planted that had been carried on the ark, AND any plants buried near the survace of the land, would probably grow up very fast and apread very fast over the whole planet. It shoudl also have better nutirtional value. And the animals themselves would have had great tstrength than their later descendants. People continued to live a long time after the flood for the first generation and the lenth of life then gradually decreased over a few hudndred years after that. Moses lived to be over A HUNDRED FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AFTER aBRAHAM AND SO ON. bUT RIGHT AFTER THE fLOOD THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ENORMOUS VITALITY STILL INHERENT IN EVERY LIVING THING. sO FOOD WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN A PROBLEM FOR THE ANIMALS, IT WOULED HAVE BEEN BUDTSTIN OUT ALL OVER. iF THEY GOT TO THE aMERICAS ON THE CONTINENTAL SHEVLVES i WOULD SUPPOSE THT PLANTS HAD ALREADY MADE A LUSH JUNGLE OF THOSE SHELVES BY THE TIME GTHEY GOT THERE.
aLAS, THE fALL HAS OVERTAKEN US ALL SINCE THEN AND WE ARE MERE SHADOWS OF OUR FORMER vigorous seleves, both plant and animal and humans too. We have ways of compensating for some of it that God in His mercy has given us. I like to listen to a particualr show about gardening on Saturday fmornings and I hear about all kinds of methods for improving the nutriion of crops for instance. And of course He has given us medicines and methods for improving our heatlth even in spite of everythig the Fall does to us to kill us. But originally it waas all built into everyt living thig and I thik given that we know that people lived a very log time even for a while after the Flood that the same vigor in all other living things should also have been he case aduring those same years.
