>I'd want to not see cooling. Crystallizing from a melt will produce
>patterns in the size, chemistry, relationships to other rocks, etc. that
>are not necessary for the instantaneous creation of granite. I'd expect
>the sandstone not to have depositional sedimentary structures or fossils.
That is certainly one hypothesis and an interesting one at that. What
would such a granite look like? Would every feldspar be identical in
appearance and the same size? Would the quartz be interstitial or as
doubly terminated crystals? Would every book of mica have the same number
of plates? How could we test for such a case? Would it be instantaneously
crystallized (process) or would it be just created without ever having
existed as a melt? Would the sandstone have no grain alignment? Would
each grain, if the sandstone were an orthoquartzite, consist of a doubly
terminated quartz crystal (of course, rounded quartz grains would be
excluded)? I think these ideas put God in an impossible box. Again, we
are not discussing what either of us think did happen, but what our
concepts of the range of possibilities are.
>Given the crucial role of history in Christianity, I think it is scriptural
>to expect extrabiblical and biblical evidence to agree. Extrabiblical
>evidence may resolve ambiguity in the biblical evidence, though the
>biblical evidence is more important.
I wholeheartedly agree with you on these points.
Art
http://chadwicka.swau.edu