From: "Darryl Maddox" <dpmaddox@arn.net>
DM: To an extent you are correct. However, what are we to do when the physical parameters of the rocks at which we are looking match those of the sediments we see being formed today? If they don't match then we may be free to ascribe any mode of origin which is consitent with hydrologic and/or chemical parameters. But even those parameters eliminate the possibility of a high energy environment of deposition for most sediments.
AR: I am just proposing that just because we have "A" sedimentary process which results in depositions that seem to match what we find in a certain sedimentary rock formation, does that mean it is the "ONLY" sedimentary process that can do so? I am not convinced.
>As a Creationary Catastrophist I am convinced that there are catastrophic means by which even supposed 'quite' and 'slow' deposits can occur.
Dm YOu may be 'convinced" and that is your right, but if you want to claim you believe this for scientific reasons you must be prepared to show that your intepretation of those particular rocks are consistent with physical and chemical parameters.
AR: True. That is something that needs to be done. But when it comes to interpretation one must first start with a philisophical paradigm. That paradigm includes having consistent physical and chemical parameters. A Creationary paradigm includes a global catastrophe model within which most sedimenatry rocks were deposited under catastrophic conditions. However, this does not mean that one would expect high energy environment all over the globe all the time. Nor, does it mean one would expect to find homogeneity over the entire globe either.
>Tsunami and turbidite deposition is a part of the sedimentary record.
DM: Yea, wasn't it the traditional geologists who found those and interpreted they while the Creationists were running around saying we were all nuts and that traditional geology had nothing of value to say about the sedimentological record? Sorry about the poke, but it was too good to pass up.
AR: It really doesn't matter who found them. Actualism allows for such catastrophic deposition as long as it is within an accepted deposition envrionment. The idea that turbidite or tsunami deposition may occure outside the accepted depositional envrionments is not allowable.
>It is quite likely that even more of the geologic record can be interpreted within a catastrophic classification system if more geologists were looking for and experimenting with catastrophic ideas.
DM: WHY?
AR: It is a trueism in geology that you find what you are looking for.
>It seems to me that the difference lies in ones philosophical assumptions. If you accept Naturalism and its corollary of Actualism, then one will automatically look for interpretations which fit within that philosophy.
DM Could you please show me what in that philosophy precludes a world wide flood? Seems to me the only thing precluding it is the data. All actualism precludes is a outside intervention in the physical and chemical laws and if that happened, how would we ever know it?? And how would you ever prove the sediments were the result of high energy, short term deposition??
AR: Actualism, like Uniformitarianism, assumes that the present is the key to the past. A global flood is not part of the present experience. The same goes for as far back as what many consider reliable history, (the Bible excluded). The only thing that is acceptable is the same kind of depisitional environments which we observe around us today -- Marine, Non-marine and Transitional.
Creationary Catastrophism does not allow for outside intervention in the physical and chemical laws either. The latest Creationary Catastrophe model proposes that the Flood was caused by a series of asteroid impacts within a 5 month period (perhaps similar to the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact on Jupiter in 1994). The resulting events, following the known physical and chemical laws, resulted in what we know as Noah's Flood.
>In Darryl's complex and incomplete sentence the ">90% of Sedimentology"
DM: Now hold on :-) IF that really was an incomplete sentence my wife will never let me hear the end of it. Thanks for pointing out the possibility.
AR: Or she never allowed you to finish it in the first place. :)
Allen
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