Thanks ikester7579,

Thanks for acknowledging that the right side shows significantly more weathering than the left side of your photo.

Are you suggesting that only you can ask questions, and that your responses don't have to deal with the inherent contradictions of your position? I wouldn't call that debate.

Let me repeat this little item, as it seems to have been missed in your response:

Notice that in spite of all that scree having fallen off the cliff face it still has horizontal bands of rock with erosion patterns aligned with those bands.

Geologist explain this with rock layers weathering and eroding at different rates due to their densities and chemical bonds, the nature of the rocks in question.

Your explanation of erosion only consisting of horizontal river erosion and vertical rain erosion has problems with this one (among hundreds) cliff inside the Grand Canyon:

(1) If the horizontal bands are due to river erosion, then how do you explain the large pile of scree? Note that the scree in this picture is higher than the remaining cliff above it.

(2) If the scree is due to vertical rain erosion, then how do you explain the horizontal bands in the cliff after all this rock has fallen off the face? There is enough scree to cover the cliff several times, so the cliff face you are seeing is what's left after the scree has fallen off.

Oh? As soon as rain hits your windshield when you are driving on the freeway, does it go up or down? Does it behave the same as when your car is still, or is there a significant difference in force and direction?

While you are considering answers to the previous questions, then you can also add to it the fact that the vertical cracks -- the ones due to vertical rain erosion according to your explanation -- also exhibit horizontal erosion.

Again you see the rock eroding according to the density and chemical bonding of the rock, thus the tilted erosion pattern above the river (unless you think water runs uphill?). You also see the effect of a different type of rock that forms vertical cracks. Basalt does this as it cools (it comes from lava flows) and the shrinkage in the vertical direction is not impede the way it is in the horizontal direction. The cracking pattern is usually hexagonal due to the chemical bonding of this kind of rock. This is common throughout the west, and in fact does occur inside the Grand Canyon as well - you can see some of it in your first picture.

Your explanation of vertical erosion does not explain why the cliff is so vertical, shouldn't it be eroded more at the (older erosion) top than at the (younger erosion) bottom of the cliff?

Nor does your vertical erosion explain the tilted erosion lower down. Your explanation of horizontal erosion does not explain the tilted erosion pattern either. Thus once again you fail to explain all the evidence, even in your own pictures.

Again, what you have is typical of basalt formations, layer on layer. Again you see erosion patterns based on the type of rock, the density and chemical bonding that different types or rocks have means that they erode in different patterns. Again, there are sections of the Grand Canyon that look like this too.

No, that would be your position. What happens is that rock erodes according to the type of rock. This simple fact explains vertical cliffs with vertical cracks, horizontal bands of sedimentary rocks eroding at different rates, and it explains erosion of tilted rocks according to the types of rock.

Oh, it's even better than that: not only is the ridge that the Grand Canyon crosses higher than the upstream portion of the river, the point where it crosses the ridge is higher than the ridge both north and south of the crossing location, AND the ridge is sloped from north to south in that location:



The darker green shades are higher elevations.

Geology explains this with gradual uplift, that the ridge has become this high after the canyon was already established and where the river continued to carve out the bottom to maintain flow as the area rose.

So far I have not seen a single creationist explanation for the canyon being in the side slope of a high point along a ridge, where any flood erosion would occur at the low point of the ridge.

I fully agree that any valid explanation must account for all of the evidence, not just cherry picked talking points, and that any explanation that avoids evidence that contradicts it is not just invalid but can be delusional.



Asserting that "wind erosion looks nothing like water erosion" does not make it true.

Still a false representation of my position: what we see is weathering and erosion (including wind, rain, snow, ice) occurring on all exposed rock surfaces based on the types of rock involved. This can be - and has been - measured. The erosion pattern we see is due to the rock types and their different density and chemical bonding affecting how easy they are to erode compared to other rock types, resulting in different rates of erosion. The horizontal banding at the top is aligned with the rock layers.

But what we see is not that scientists cannot tell the difference, but that lay people cannot tell the difference. Whether geologists know the difference between weathering and different types of erosion doesn't mean that people looking at pictures can tell the difference. Pictures don't show the details that you see by picking up rocks and breaking them open. Weathering is a surface effect and this shows up as a layer on theouter portions of the rock that is different from the rock inside.

Curiously this has already been done by geologist, but creationists have not dealt with the issue yet.

Curiously this has been done by geologists, but creationists have not dealt with the issue yet, and they need to deal with much higher rates of deposition.

The river flows into the ocean at a geological rift that is seperating. The material eroded from the Grand Canyon today is not building a delta there because the deposition rate is not high enough.

Once again, this is not my position but your straw man version.

Which still is not my position.

Curiously I am capable of looking at the evidence (yes I've seen the Grand Canyon in person) and able to come to the conclusion that the Canyon is carved by a river at the bottom and by weathering and erosion by wind and rain and ice and snow on the upper sections. Curiously this is what geologists claim as well. Curiously this does work.

Curiously this explanation also includes scree at the bottom of cliffs, with banded erosion perfectly aligned with sedimentary layers (regardless of their orientation to mostly horizontal flow).

Curiously this explanation also includes vertical cracks in basaltic rocks and a vertical pattern on canyon walls where these rocks occur (inside and out of the Grand Canyon).

Curiously this explanation also shows how horizontal banding, perfectly aligned with sedimentary layers, also extends inside vertical cracks that have developed (long) after river erosion.

Curiously this explanation also shows how the Grand Canyon now crosses a ridge that is higher than the headwaters, and curiously it also explains why it crosses the ridge at a high point along the ridge.

Curiously geology explains all the evidence in the Grand Canyon, while creationists have yet to explain any with processes that are not contradicted by other evidence, even evidence in their own pictures.

Enjoy.