QuestionEvolution G1-G8
John Harshman
> Why aren't the continents eroded?
>
> At the current rate, the continents should have eroded much more than
> they have..
This is a quantitative claim, and you should back this up with
something. Anything. There are all sorts of different rates of erosion
happening all over the world. The fastest rates are generally where
slopes are steepest, and these slopes are steep because the ground is
being uplifted. Every mountain is a race between erosion and uplift.
Most mountains today are being eroded at a high rate, but are being
uplifted at a slightly higher one.
The answer to your question is that there is a tectonic cycle. Erosion
moves material from high areas to low areas, but plate tectonics,
causing uplift and subsidence, changes the locations of high and low
areas over time. Which is why there are marine fossils on top of many
mountains.
> How did fossils form?
>
> Any sea creature dying and falling to the bottom of a body of water
> would either decay or be eaten before being slowly covered with silt.
> Many land animals have been found fossilized. They could not have all
> been buried under water.
The study of fossilization is called taphonomy, and there's a huge
literature on it. Your assertions are just plain wrong. First, there's a
great variation in how susceptible different parts of different
organisms are to decay. Hard shells are more resistant than soft organs,
which is why most of the fossil record consists of snails, claims, and
echinoderm skeletons. Predation and decay are reduced in cold, anoxic
water. And many burials are not slow but quick, occasioned by such
things as slumps, turbidity flows, and floods (don't get too excited;
not global floods). Terrestrial fossils are formed in a variety of
environments. Water (like rivers) is involved in many but not all cases.
You realize that none of this fits a global flood scenario, don't you?
> Where did so much sedimentary rock come from?
>
> A vast majority of the rock that we find was laid down by water.
Or in water, yes. Especially in epicontinental seas, which during most
of earth's history have been much more extensive than they are now.
Sedimentary rock comes mostly from erosion of other rocks, mostly from
regions of uplift, and from the skeletons of shelled marine animals. If
you're saying there's more than there ought to be, you should present
some numbers to show this. But how we would expect more sedimentary rock
from a single year-long flood than from billions of years of erosion and
deposition is quite beyond me.
> Why are stalactites used to prove old age in caves when they have
> already formed under the Lincoln Memorial?
>
> In just 45 years, these stalactites were almost 5 feet in length. The
> rate of stalactite formation therefore depends on more than time.
True. It depends also on conditions in the cave, on the amount of
dissolved minerals in the water, and on the rate of flow of water.
> How was coal formed?
>
> There is nowhere in the world that coal (or oil) is being formed
> today.
And you know this how? If it's happening, it would be happening far
under ground, in strata buried far under other strata.
> How does one explain bent strata?
>
> The strata had to be bent while it was soft.
Plastic deformation under high heat and pressure, resulting from being
buried under sever miles of sediments.
> Why does one commonly find ancient rocks on top of new rocks?
One doesn't, commonly. Except in regions with lots of thrust faults.
> How do you explain canyons?
>
> It seems natural that the canyon should run the entire length of the
> river, but there are many places where a river, flowing downhill the
> entire way, has cut a canyon thousands of feet thick in some places
> but left some portions of the riverbed level with surrounding land.
There are all sorts of reasons why canyons of different sorts are cut.
The Colorado River in the Grand Canyon area happens to be flowing
through an area in which the rocks are being uplifted. It cuts down in
the area of uplift to maintain its gradient. Outside the area of uplift,
it's in equilibrium.
Sverker Johansson
>
> > Geology
> > Why aren't the continents eroded?
> >
> > At the current rate, the continents should have eroded much more than
> > they have..
>
> This is a quantitative claim, and you should back this up with
> something. Anything. There are all sorts of different rates of erosion
> happening all over the world. The fastest rates are generally where
> slopes are steepest, and these slopes are steep because the ground is
> being uplifted. Every mountain is a race between erosion and uplift.
> Most mountains today are being eroded at a high rate, but are being
> uplifted at a slightly higher one.
>
> The answer to your question is that there is a tectonic cycle. Erosion
> moves material from high areas to low areas, but plate tectonics,
> causing uplift and subsidence, changes the locations of high and low
> areas over time. Which is why there are marine fossils on top of many
> mountains.
There is even strong negative feedback in the process, that helps
to keep it in rough equilibrium. If the continents get pushed up
too high, then erosion increases and grinds them down -- but if
there is too much erosion and too little uplift, then the continents
get flat and erosion effectively stops, until uplift gets going
again.
> > How did fossils form?
> >
> > Any sea creature dying and falling to the bottom of a body of water
> > would either decay or be eaten before being slowly covered with silt.
> > Many land animals have been found fossilized. They could not have all
> > been buried under water.
>
> The study of fossilization is called taphonomy, and there's a huge
> literature on it. Your assertions are just plain wrong. First, there's a
> great variation in how susceptible different parts of different
> organisms are to decay. Hard shells are more resistant than soft organs,
> which is why most of the fossil record consists of snails, claims, and
> echinoderm skeletons. Predation and decay are reduced in cold, anoxic
> water. And many burials are not slow but quick, occasioned by such
> things as slumps, turbidity flows, and floods (don't get too excited;
> not global floods). Terrestrial fossils are formed in a variety of
> environments. Water (like rivers) is involved in many but not all cases.
>
> You realize that none of this fits a global flood scenario, don't you?
>
> > Where did so much sedimentary rock come from?
A tiny fraction of a millimeter per year, over billions of years, adds
up to miles and miles of rocks. Do the arithmetic.
> > A vast majority of the rock that we find was laid down by water.
>
> Or in water, yes. Especially in epicontinental seas, which during most
> of earth's history have been much more extensive than they are now.
> Sedimentary rock comes mostly from erosion of other rocks, mostly from
> regions of uplift, and from the skeletons of shelled marine animals. If
> you're saying there's more than there ought to be, you should present
> some numbers to show this. But how we would expect more sedimentary rock
> from a single year-long flood than from billions of years of erosion and
> deposition is quite beyond me.
>
> > Why are stalactites used to prove old age in caves when they have
> > already formed under the Lincoln Memorial?
> >
> > In just 45 years, these stalactites were almost 5 feet in length. The
> > rate of stalactite formation therefore depends on more than time.
>
> True. It depends also on conditions in the cave, on the amount of
> dissolved minerals in the water, and on the rate of flow of water.
>
> > How was coal formed?
> >
> > There is nowhere in the world that coal (or oil) is being formed
> > today.
>
> And you know this how? If it's happening, it would be happening far
> under ground, in strata buried far under other strata.
>
> > How does one explain bent strata?
> >
> > The strata had to be bent while it was soft.
And sufficiently hot rock is soft enough.
[implicit in your answer -- but given the intellectual
level we're talking to, I thought I'd make it explicit]
> Plastic deformation under high heat and pressure, resulting from being
> buried under sever miles of sediments.
>
> > Why does one commonly find ancient rocks on top of new rocks?
>
> One doesn't, commonly. Except in regions with lots of thrust faults.
>
> > How do you explain canyons?
> >
> > It seems natural that the canyon should run the entire length of the
> > river, but there are many places where a river, flowing downhill the
> > entire way, has cut a canyon thousands of feet thick in some places
> > but left some portions of the riverbed level with surrounding land.
>
> There are all sorts of reasons why canyons of different sorts are cut.
> The Colorado River in the Grand Canyon area happens to be flowing
> through an area in which the rocks are being uplifted. It cuts down in
> the area of uplift to maintain its gradient. Outside the area of uplift,
> it's in equilibrium.
--
Best regards,
Sverker Johansson
-----------------------------
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy,
education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would
indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of
punishment and hope of reward after death." - Albert Einstein
------------------------------
Neil Alexander
"Sverker Johansson" <lsj.h...@homo.sapiens.se> wrote in message
news:3F6772CC...@homo.sapiens.se...
> John Harshman wrote:
> >
> > > Geology
snip
> >
> > > Where did so much sedimentary rock come from?
>
> A tiny fraction of a millimeter per year, over billions of years, adds
> up to miles and miles of rocks. Do the arithmetic.
>
Did some, 0.3mm per year over 200,000,000 years gives 60 km of rock.
snip
Ecce
John Harshman
Neil Alexander wrote:
It's important to tell the creationists that it doesn't work that way.
Very little deposition is so uniform over even a few years, let alone
millions. The closest approach would be deep sea oozes, and that's not
very close. Deposition is instead episodic. In a particular spot, there
may be hardly anything for a hundred years, and then several meters
deposited by a single storm, followed by another hundred years of nothing.
Long term, a single depositional environment seldom lasts more than a
few million years in a single place.
David Jensen
<bk7ums$igk$1...@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk>:
Apparently you haven't heard of erosion.
Mark Isaak
<jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> How was coal formed?
>>
>> There is nowhere in the world that coal (or oil) is being formed
>> today.
>
>
>And you know this how? If it's happening, it would be happening far
>under ground, in strata buried far under other strata.
I don't have references handy, but there is some indication that coal
formation lessened quite a bit after termites evolved.
If I were to look for coal forming, I would look in peat bogs.
--
Mark Isaak at...@earthlink.net
"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of
the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are
being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
exposing the country to danger." -- Hermann Goering
Neil Alexander
"David Jensen" <da...@dajensen-family.com> wrote in message
news:9kmfmv8e4pjv6r022...@4ax.com...
I had heard of erosion, and yes, my calculation was simplistic. I also
didn't take compression into account as the upper rock exerts its mass on
the lower strata.
I also didn't include such things as possible glacial events etc., but if
you want to nit-pick go right ahead.
Ecce
--
"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life.
Can you give it to them?
Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."
Thomas H. Faller
>About QuestionEvolution.com
>This website was originally compiled as a worksheet for a class on the
>evolution / creation debate. It is not intended to make a case for
>biblical creation, as there are many excellent books that do that.
>Rather it was created to show that the theory that is presented as
>scientific (evolution) is really not nearly as well supported by
>scientific fact and discoveries as the average evolutionist believes.
>A careful and objective study of the universe points one more in the
>direction of special creation than natural evolution.
The questions as a whole show a remarkable lack of real-world
observation and knowledge of any scientific facts. Most
questions appear to be based on data that are over-generalized,
out-of-date, or just wrong, and a better selection of facts
would answer most questions.
>Geology
>Why aren't the continents eroded?
>At the current rate, the continents should have eroded much more than
>they have..
This question is representative of the paragraph above. There is
no indication that the author is aware of any facts of modern geology.
The continents are periodically eroded and then are periodically
innundated by the sea and are covered with fresh sedimentary deposits.
What he think is being eroded now? Citing "the current rate"
shows he is ignorant of the cyclical nature of sedimentation,
tectonics, or the changing profile of the continents.
A question for the creationist is why there are rock strata nearly
everywhere, in settings that can not be explained by floods (such
as lithified desert dune sands or extensive silts or evaporites)
if Creation happened?
>How did fossils form?
>Any sea creature dying and falling to the bottom of a body of water
>would either decay or be eaten before being slowly covered with silt.
>Many land animals have been found fossilized. They could not have all
>been buried under water.
Another question showing basic ignorance of paleontology. Most
creatures are destroyed by predation, by decay, by erosion (visit
any beach) or by later destruction after becoming part of the
strata, due to erosion or subduction into the crust. Only a tiny
fraction of the creatures which have lived are preserved today,
which accounts for the gaps in the fossil record.
Nevertheless, there are always environments where rapid burial or
lack of decay or predation make preservation of body parts likely,
and then mineral replacement completes the fossiization process
later. All that remains is for erosion or digging to enable us to
find the fossils.
Land animals can be buried in sediments in streams, in floods,
in lakes, in tar pits, in sand dunes, in bogs and in other land-based
traps. Their method of burial is reflected in the sediments they
are found in. Not knowing this points to an almost complete lack of
knowledge about geology, rather than it being a stumbling block
for evolution.
A question for the creationist is why sedimentary rocks world
wide show similar progressions of trends in fossils, impossible
to explain by hydrological sorting, and illustrating huge quantities
of extinct organisms? One formation in North America has enough
crinoids pieces to cover the earth.
>Where did so much sedimentary rock come from?
>A vast majority of the rock that we find was laid down by water.
This question, of all so far, deserves a "duh". Sedimentary rock
is ultimately derived from the weathering of igneous rock or from
biological material like shells or silicate organisms. When
igneous rock weathers, it forms minerals, clays and the longest
lasting product, quartz, or sand. These products are deposited,
weathered, re-deposited, re-eroded, and even re-assembled into
living things. Limestones and silicious shales are formed from
biological material that has been weathered, but it too can be
re-deposited and reworked. All rock can be metamorphosed under
the right settings, and then weathered again.
The vast majority of the sedimentary rock we find was laid down
by water because water is able to supply more energy for transport
than wind and gravity is uni-directional. On an airless world
like the moon, we should expect meteor impact to be the dominant
form of erosion, and ballistic transport or tectonics the main
form of transportation.
A question for the creationist is why sedimentary rocks can show
evidence of re-working, transport and redeposition that mix
rocks of widely varying origin, indicating different processes
and different timescales impossible to explain by short-period
processes. An example would be a conglomerate made of reworked
quartz pebbles, limestone pebbles, metamorphic rocks, alluvial
sands and cherts, found in Utah.
>Why are stalactites used to prove old age in caves when they have
>already formed under the Lincoln Memorial?
>In just 45 years, these stalactites were almost 5 feet in length. The
>rate of stalactite formation therefore depends on more than time.
Yes. It does. Cave stalactites are formed as dilute acid, carbonic
acid, dissolves the limestone strata in a cave and re-deposit it
as the water/acid evaporate along the stalactite column. Where the
mix drips frrom the column, stalagmites form on the floor.
The Lincoln Monument is composed of calcite-containing rock which
is exposed to the acid-containing humidity and rain of the
Washington, D.C. area. The term "acid rain" is used to indicate
the dissolving power of the precipitation commonly found there.
"Acid rain" is what is dissolving the structure of the Lincoln
Memorial, at a rate much faster than usually seen in nature or in
caves, and transporting it to stalactites.
When caves are opened to outside weather, or are flooded by a
change in water level, stalactite production is affected, and
cave formations can be dissolved away. Stalactite formation is
a balance of supply material, evaporation, and the chemical
strength of the transport medium. They aren't constants, even
within a cave.
A question for the creationist is why caves are found at elevations
of over 10,000 ft, with old-growth stalactites (as indicated by
rings), from seafloor-derived limestones (from fossil evidence)?
The cave formation and stalactite growth indicate the limestone
has been in place for longer than hundreds of thousands of years.
>How was coal formed?
>There is nowhere in the world that coal (or oil) is being formed
>today.
Burial and compression of carbon-rich sediments.
Coal is forming in many places today. Besides peat bogs, it is
likely forming beneath tundras and coastal swamps. We see coal-
production underground where near-surface natural gas is high,
like in the Arctic.
The question for the creationist is why coal exists at all, contains
fossils, and exists in some locations, such as the Midwest, in
regular layers with sandstones, limestones and shales all less
than an inch thick, indicating long term periodic rise and fall of
sea level complete with changes in fossil fauna over time?
>How does one explain bent strata?
>The strata had to be bent while it was soft.
Rocks are plastic over time. Rocks can be bent with sufficient
pressure in laboratories, and show features of strain, grain
deformation and stress fracturing similar to rocks in situ.
Forces sufficient to shear and fracture rocks, as around faults,
will deform those rocks near the fault break. Forces act on
rocks after they harden, as evidenced by the deformation of
fossils within bent rock. Force applied over differing lengths
of time will show up as differing patterns of deformation, as
the rock is allowed to adjust to stress.
The question for the creationist is why oceanic crust bends and
subducts at plate margins, remaining intact to depths of dozens
of kilometers? Why should there be any difference between the
oceanic crust and continental crust? The MidWest demonstrates
that continental crust can serve as sea floor.
>Why does one commonly find ancient rocks on top of new rocks?
This is not common. If it were, the principle of superposition
would not account for most strata.
The question also pre-supposes there is a means to determine
which rock strata is "ancient" or "new", which begs the question
creationists are trying to ask.
Any faulting which raises older rock can place it over younger
rock. Very low angle faults (thrust faulting) can place large
areas of older rock over younger rock, but thrust faulting can
be detected in place by examination of the contact plane. Faulting
and folding, followed by erosion, can place "overturned beds",
which are explained by examining the regional stratigraphy and
tectonics. They do not occur in isolation.
A question for the creationist is to explain the rule, not the
exception. Why is stratigraphy dominated by persistance of rock
types, index fossils, aereal erosional surfaces, evidence of
concordant depositional environments, evidence of regular and
slow sea level change and tectonics?
>How do you explain canyons?
>It seems natural that the canyon should run the entire length of the
>river, but there are many places where a river, flowing downhill the
>entire way, has cut a canyon thousands of feet thick in some places
>but left some portions of the riverbed level with surrounding land.
Why should it be natural that canyons run the entire length of a
river? Can anyone envision the Mississippi Canyon or the Ohio
Canyon? Canyons exist where the steepness of the gradient give
flowing water the power to carve into existing rock. Where the
gradient is shallow, rivers lose that power. The Grand Canyon,
Hell's Canyon and other examples have steeply flowing rivers -
both are prime spots for sportsmen seeking rapids to run. When the
Colorado river reaches less steep terrain, it slows down and
drops its sediment load at its banks, becoming level with the
surroundings.
Because topography doesn't usually change back and forth between
steep and flat, there aren't many rivers with canyons at more
than one spot along their length, but I would guess that there
are rivers along the eastern US seaboard that leave the mountains,
flatten out, and then hit the Fall Line, which is the remanent of
an ancient coastal plain, and spawn waterfalls, and in some cases,
canyons again. The Niagara Falls and its gorge is an example of
a canyon produced by an abrupt change in topography.
River energy and its cutting power are controlled by slope, and
the failure to observe this, and instead to relay on some
"natural idea" of how canyons should form demonstrates the basic
failure of creationists to deal with the real world.
A question for creationists is to explain the physics of
sedimentation. Erosion is subject to the laws of physics. Rocks
are eroded more quickly and more deeply by greater force. The
size of the particles eroded vary with the energy of the eroding
medium. Particles settle through their medium at rates which
depend on physical properties. The laws of physics can be applied
to sediment grain size, weight and pattern of deposition. So how
can the record of stratigraphy be explained in a manner consistant
with physics in a way that does not require billions of years
to produce the depositional sequences we see?
Tom Faller
Sverker Johansson
We've heard of it, allright. But the point was to rebut the
creationist idiocy that sedimentation couldn't account for
the few miles of rock that we have. Sedimentation provides
enough rock and to spare -- after that, we can remove 99% of
it through erosion, and make allowances for wild variations
in deposition rate, and so on, and still be left with plenty.
Best regards
Sverker Johansson
David Jensen
<4c9281ba.03091...@posting.google.com>:
Sorry, I missed an attribution along the way.
I was thinking that the point of the poster I commented to was that
sedimentation would be impossibly thick, so it didn't happen at all.
It turns out that I was the one being impossibly thick.
Richard McBane
> On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 18:27:07 +0000 (UTC), John Harshman
> <jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>
>>>How was coal formed?
>>>
>>>There is nowhere in the world that coal (or oil) is being formed
>>>today.
>>
>>
>>And you know this how? If it's happening, it would be happening far
>>under ground, in strata buried far under other strata.
>
>
> I don't have references handy, but there is some indication that coal
> formation lessened quite a bit after termites evolved.
>
> If I were to look for coal forming, I would look in peat bogs.
Yes - the Okefenokee Swamp of Georgia is considered an example where
peat being formed today that could eventually be turned to coal.
>
> --
> Mark Isaak at...@earthlink.net
> "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of
> the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are
> being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
> exposing the country to danger." -- Hermann Goering
>
--
Richard McBane
Pithecanthropus erectus
"Richard McBane" <r.mc...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:OI_9b.486158$Ho3.82346@sccrnsc03...
> Mark Isaak wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 18:27:07 +0000 (UTC), John Harshman
> > <jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>>How was coal formed?
> >>>
> >>>There is nowhere in the world that coal (or oil) is being formed
> >>>today.
> >>
> >>
> >>And you know this how? If it's happening, it would be happening far
> >>under ground, in strata buried far under other strata.
> >
> >
> > I don't have references handy, but there is some indication that coal
> > formation lessened quite a bit after termites evolved.
> >
> > If I were to look for coal forming, I would look in peat bogs.
>
> Yes - the Okefenokee Swamp of Georgia is considered an example where
> peat being formed today that could eventually be turned to coal.
>
Northern Minnesota has abundant peat as well, northeast of Lancaster, in the
northwest corner (near where I grew up.)
> >
> > --
> > Mark Isaak at...@earthlink.net
> > "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of
> > the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are
> > being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
> > exposing the country to danger." -- Hermann Goering
> >
>
> --
> Richard McBane
>
---
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