micatala wrote:I disagree that we should always see erosion constantly occurring through wind and water. I think we should see some places where erosion does not really occur. Such places I would expect not to see erosion would be.
1) Shallow flat seas or lakes where there is no current.
2) Land areas that are flat and covered by ice which has no pressure on it to move.
3) Flat areas which are covered with vegetation but have a dry climate. Vegetation, if it remains in place, I would think could prevent wind erosion.
I can grant that no erosion can occur at these places for a relatively short period of time. But in SG, the terrain is constantly changing. Can millions of years pass under such conditions of no change in terrain and no erosion? What would then cause an abrupt change to have a layer deposited and also have no erosion?
For your points 1 and 3, bioturbation would be a factor. Stratas are typified by distinct lines. But, how can distinct lines form under bioturbation?
In point 2, layers of stratas cannot be accounted for if ice always covered the area.
Also, it seems to me that in flat areas that did experience wind erosion, the erosion would be fairly uniform, wearing down the layers evenly. Thus, you wouldn't see crevices, gullies, etc.
For a small section of area, this could be possible. But for medium to large areas, the sediments carried by the wind would still have to be deposited somewhere.
Now, not to nitpick, but the other part of my point earlier is what you mean by "uniformly throughout the layers." Do you mean, for example, that at every location on earth, you should see roughly the same patterns as you drill down through the layers?
I'm not saying that every location on earth would see the same pattern. But, if we collect a large sample of locations on the earth, we should see a significant part of the samples to
not have the pattern of layers/deformation/erosion.
The problem I have with your prediction is that it is way too vague.
You are free to provide an alternative prediction.
Again, we have not considered how long it might take some formations to form, how long it might take between faulting episodes in a particular spot or even how often faulting occurs on average, if and why faulting occurs at some spots often and almost never at others.
We can discuss what would cause faulting. Some things I can think of are earthquakes and plate movement.
I think it is fair to say, some regions on earth might have NEVER seen faulting) etc.
True. However, I also think it is fair to say that many faults should be recorded in the geologic record that does
not extend all the way to the top. And that this should vastly outnumber faults that does extend to the top strata.
SG says faults should occur more often at the boundaries of plates. I fail to see why SG would predict a "random distribution"
I was primarily referring to a random distribution in time. That is, faults should be recorded to stop at random stratas.
Examples such as the below should be much more numerous than faults that extend all the way to the surface.
The same argument holds for folds and deformations.
I am not sure how your claim follows. It depends on how often faulting occurs at a particular spot. In addition, if a particular place has conditions which foster faulting, you might have faults, more layers, another fault, maybe no depostion for a while, yet another fault, etc.
The diagram is a simplified illustration to only show how a fault that occurred in the past would be recorded in the rock record. Of course more faults could happen at the same spot afterwards. In that case, an additional fault would be seen to stop at a higher strata.
My rejection of the FM is not based in any way on a desire to discount or deny the Bible.
Of course I made a generalization and does not apply to everyone. But, as I made in the
quote above, there is some validity to my observation.
1) The fossil record (I know otseng has asked for a 3-day representation of the fossil record and this has not been produced, but I still maintain what we do know and have cited is sufficient to show the fossil record could not possibly have been produced by a single flood event)
I await until we can objectively analyze the raw data before we can make any conclusion on this.
2) They layering we see. I have asked how a single flood could have produced the iridium layer, for example, and do not recall anything close to a satisfactory answer. There are many other layering phenomenon that do not seem at all consistent with a global flood.
I've countered that the iridium layer being produced by an impact event is not conclusive and speculative.
Though iridium is rare, it is not limited to objects from outer space. Iridium can still exist on Earth. So, I find no special reason to reject the FM based on an iridium layer.
3) No salt in ice core layers going back many tens of thousands of years. This at least discounts a global flood within that time span.
I think your main point in this was that your assumption was that all the ice layers were formed during the flood. However, I believe the ice layers were formed after the flood. I realize that we have not gone into detail about ice layers, but we can get into that after discussions about the predictions.
4) The volume of coal, oil, etc., not to mention the number of fossils and quantity of organic material in the crust. We did address this some, but I do not believe what is in the crust could have been produced by life which was all alive at roughly the same time.
I had already demonstrated that there could've been enough vegetation on Earth to produce all the world's coal. As for oil, I'm still trying to figure out a comparable way to determine this.
Now, not to overwhelm the thread again, I would say let's further clarify otseng's illustration, find examples, and clarify how often and where we might find his given illustration as well as places where we probably would not.
Before we get to that, I'd like to get a consensus on the predictions. I know that people don't like my prediction for SG. So I'd ask for an alternative prediction. And if no predictions can be made, I'd like for that to be agreed on.
