No scientist follows the creationist straw man notion that all of geology must be uniformitarian. For example, we know that catastrophic flooding happens. There's just no evidence that it has ever happened on a global scale. It also is nonsensical to claim that because parts of the Grand Canyon may have been formed relatively quickly, and at different times, that therefore science has it completely wrong. There may be some hypotheses in both of the papers we discussed which may eventually be falsified, but there will be follow-up research which aims to further investigate. That's how science works. But do scientists believe in some uniformitarian ideal? Of course not; this is an outdated ideology which enjoyed some popularity at one point in time, but it is not modern science.

I'm still wondering why you seem to think that the Nile and Mississippi Rivers, which periodically flood, are evidence of anything under discussion here. Please enlighten me.

Can we clarify something before we proceed any further here? Can you please inform me where in the geological column the flood layer begins, and where it ends? Otherwise we are dealing in vagaries and shifting goalposts. Since "creation scientists" have been studying the flood for a couple hundred years at least, these boundaries should be well established. Thanks.

You will also be aware that science works by proposing hypotheses, testing them, and throwing out the ones that have been falsified. Part of falsifying a hypothesis is presenting an alternative model which explains the evidence more adequately. By asking you to present an alternative model here, I am asking you to participate in this process, which should presumably not be a problem since you present creationism here as science. Please present your own model and explain why it fits the evidence better than that of mainstream science, thanks.

Brachiopods are used as index fossils in some Grand Canyon marine layers. They would not be used as index fossils if they showed signs of having been washed there from elsewhere. I gave you two links which show how scientists determine whether or not brachiopod fossils have grown in place. Composition, relative position, and depth of stone are simple geological measurements which are done along with fossil finds. In the Grand Canyon, brachiopods are found in early layers dating from the Cambrian.

As for the brachiopod fossil stalk which was examined under the microscope, and the accompanying paper which was published in a peer reviewed journal . . . maybe you should write to them and tell them they're all wrong because when you look at the picture on the internet with your own expert eyes, you think the stalk looks like a parasite. I'm sure the thought never occurred to them.

Baumgardner, in your link, is misrepresenting the geological processes involved in uplift of the Himalayas. His simplistic position is that uplift and erosion should offset each other. In studying the uplift of mountains, tectonics, erosion, and climate are all interrelated and need to be taken into account. What's more, he fails to mention a phenomenon called isostatic readjustment, which occurs when a great mass such as rock or ice is removed from the earth's crust and the crust "springs back." This happens when a mountain erodes. You can read some real science about mountain-building here.

Baumgardner likes to try to explain how geological events could have happened really, really quickly and really, really recently. He is behind the idea of runaway subduction, which has some major scientific flaws. The thing is, the uplift of the Himalayas is not problematic at all, which will be confirmed by any Google on the subject, as well as posts on EvC. There are lots of posts at EvC about the subjects we've been discussing here actually. You could talk to geologists there, if you were wanting to learn something. Are you wanting to learn? Why exactly are you talking here and not there?

A final comment about mountains forming in the space of a few thousand years. That sort of stress, over so short a time, would cause the rocks to fracture (called brittle deformation). What we see instead is that rock layers inside mountains have been plastically deformed -- a process which necessarily occurs over a much longer period of time. You can read more about the results of time and pressure on rocks here.

Moving on, maybe you can specifically define what you are calling "residual" tectonic events? The mainstream scientific view is that the Indian plate has been colliding with the Asian plate for millions of years, and that the pressure from this is uplifting mountains and causing earthquakes. This is tectonic activity which has occurred in the past and which continues to occur now. We can also tell where the plates have been in the past, and where they are going, by studying the paleomagnetism of the rocks they contain. This is a fundamental part of the study of plate tectonics.



No, I Googled Grand Canyon Hermit Shale. Can you explain why your idea that scientists must be lying about the alleged bird tracks is more legitimate that the idea that these could be tracks of another creature, that the tracks may not be from the Permian period (depending on who made the identification and how), and some creationists are simply labelling them as bird tracks? Do you, for example, have access to any of the science they have performed in order to make such a positive identification?



If you want to bring up a specific example, we can discuss it. Scientists use things called dating methods which creationists seem to find inconvenient enough to ignore.



Details: ripple marks appear in the Hermit Shale, the Hakatai Shale, and the Bass Limestone. Quadruped footprints have been found in the Supai Group from the Pennsylvanian period, and the Hermit Shale. Paleosols (fossilised soils) are also found between various layers. I await your explanation of how a global flood explains the existence of these better than the model of an old earth with climate and evolutionary changes evident in the geological record.

One more question: if the global flood carved the Grand Canyon, why did it not carve similar grand canyons in all of the continents? Weren't the waters receding all over the world?