From: bivalve (bivalve@mail.davidson.alumlink.com)
Date: Thu Apr 17 2003 - 18:20:50 EDT
We seem to be on different wavelengths here.
>wrong question. You should be asking whether a Flood acting over a short period of time or rainfall acting over millions of years would best explain our observations of the paraconformities I have cited.<
I would agree that this is the question, with a few caveats. One is that this determines the better explanation, rather than the best. Another is that wind, waves, chemical erosion, organismal activity, and many other factors besides rainfall are involved. More importantly, the examples of paraconformities are only a small part of the geologic record; thus, the fundamental question is whether Flood geology or conventional geology better explains the entire suite of deposits in question.
However, to answer this question, it is necessary to know what a Flood acting over a short period of time would do. Thus, by requesting that you provide a coherent model of the Flood, I am trying to address this question. I have no idea what a Flood would do acting over a short period of time because various Flood geologists claim it could do anything that happens to need explaining. Obviously you have not specifically made or endorsed all these claims, but you have not presented a specific model of what the Flood was like. You say that a Flood would produce sheet erosion. Why? What are the hydrologic conditions? How strong a flow? Over what area? Over what time period? Without such information, the claim that a Flood could account for the paraconformities or anything else is merely an expression of faith in the abilities of a Flood. While faith is extremely important, it is false to claiming that the Flood is a superior scientific explanation without providing an!
y explanation of what a Flood does.
Likewise, it is necessary to know what observations are to be explained in order to tell what model provides a better explanation. The question about what layers are attributed to the Flood has two important bearings on the issue. First, I have had no opportunity to examine the strata of the Grand Canyon, but I am familiar with the contacts found in strata in the coastal plain here in the eastern U.S. I can provide plenty of information on how well they fit with a particular model, if the model in question is considered to be applicable. Secondly, the layers being explained provide important constraints on how well a Flood model explains things. A process that takes days to weeks to generate a paraconformity is incompatible with a one-year Flood model if the geologic section in question contains 500 paraconformities (not to mention time for depositing the intervening layers), for example.
Of course, there is also the problem of chosing criteria for a better explanation. What makes an explanation better? My taste in explanations differs from yours, but if we can choose explicit criteria we can decide whether one explanation is better by that particular criterion.
Dr. David Campbell
Old Seashells
University of Alabama
Biodiversity & Systematics
Dept. Biological Sciences
Box 870345
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0345 USA
bivalve@mail.davidson.alumlink.com
That is Uncle Joe, taken in the masonic regalia of a Grand Exalted Periwinkle of the Mystic Order of Whelks-P.G. Wodehouse, Romance at Droitgate Spa
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