Coal deposit thickness and how this could form over millions of years without contamination from slow sedimentation

Faith & Science Conversation
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That is a fallacy of modern intellectual construct. It has also be dubunked at great length by scholars…its a mute point St Roymond and it doesnt stand up to theological test against referenced scripture. We can go down this rabbit warren again if necessary but honestly, its a timewasting argument…up to you.

Let me simply illustrate using a single point that is highly problematic for such an argument:

Iin using your claim above, you make the statement that Genesis 1 is allegorical and that the death God warned Adam and Eve about should they eat of the tree in the middle of the garden, was not a physical death. yours is the claim it is spiritual death.

The issue is, scriptire simply does not support your claim of spiritual only death…

Christ (God) humbled himself taking on the form of his own creation (a man),

Was incarnate and live physcially among his own creation revealing the Father to us,

He was baptised phsycially,

He ministered physically,

He was tortured and crucified physically on the cross (atonement for the wages of sin is death which is also in fulfillment of the Old Testament Sanctuary service atonement service over thousands of years),

Then he physically rose again 3 days (parts of days actually) later, addressed doubting thomas with a statement of physcial touch to affirm He was alive…after he had already ascended into heaven to present Himself to the Father (again in fulfillment of the Old Testament Sanctuary Service)

Ministered physically to over 500 people for weeks after his ressurection,

He ascended physically into heaven.

If the death of Adam and Eve was spiritual…how do you reconcile that with physical atonement by Christ for the wages of sin is death?

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Again, looking for loopholes. The article you cite is an exception to the rule. YEC apologists seize on every recognized anomaly and then try to make that exception the rule. Do you understand shale? It’s not generic “mud.” Shale is made from the fine particles that kick up and make the water cloudy when you walk into body of water. It has to settle and be covered by other sediments before it can even start to solidify into rock. That can’t happen in turbulent waters, such as a flood. It’s simple common sense, as well as settled geology. If YEC claims a global flood is responsible for depositing sedimentary rock layers, then it has zero explanation for the alternating bands of shale and sandstone (not mud) found in the Haymond formation.

It’s not just a majority vote. Everyone who exists outside the very small YEC bubble recognizes the world and the universe are ancient. It’s an obvious fact, just like the earth is a globe and not flat.

I appreciate your point about Elijah. I think all of us here who call ourselves Christian have heard that still, small voice, but it’s not found in nature, and you completely misunderstand if you think anyone here is a believer in Jesus because we found him in nature in or natural theology.

You’ve talked to a bunch of Christians on this site. All of us seek the still, small voice, and none of us come from a position of secularism or “there is no God.” Unless, of course, you deny that we’re Christians because we don’t accept your particular interpretation of scripture.

As for not finding God in the grandeur of his creation, let’s clarify. No one “finds” God simply through contemplating the beauty or infinite expanse of creation, but if you can’t take in those things and be awestruck, I pity you.

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No, it hasn’t – no scholar will tell you that scripture can be read apart from a worldview, and the worldview that people use when they haven’t studied to learn the worldview of the writer is the one they grew up in – and all of us grew up with a modernist worldview.

How many times do you have to be admonished? STOP THE LYING.

Already answered, multiple times. I don’t know if you actually can’t remember what people have written here or if you’re being deliberately obtuse or if you’re so blinded by your narrow view of things that you actually fail to grasp any meaning that isn’t in your box of possible ideas, but none of those looks very good.

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It also doesn’t even touch on what Adam was responding to – the article can be found here:

https://sci-hub.se/10.1126/science.1151980

and it doesn’t at all address the matter of tracks left in mud.

Or what we saw in samples in geology class, mudstone topped by shale topped by sandstone. The first two can be plausibly explained by a mild event where mud was being deposited in a way that stirred up the really fine particles to settle on top of the coarser (relative to the fine particles) ones; the particles in shale are so small that they will be last to settle in any single event. Then sandstone on top of shale requires very mild deposition conditions that don’t start until the particles in the shale are not just settled but clinging together so that the new flow bearing sand won’t disturb the top of the preceding layer – and it’s not hard to tell the difference since if the shale particles are disturbed while sand is being deposited you get ‘dirty’ sandstone.
There is no possible process where such alternating layers could be deposited by one highly turbulent event; it’s not just contrary to observed processes, it’s contrary to physics.

A final note about just how small the particles that make up shale are: water that is ‘muddy’ from such particles can be extremely close to being a colloid, and in fact where the water chemistry is right it can take a few weeks or longer for the particles to settle (standard geology demo: shake up a jar of water mixed with particles fine enough to become shale and let it sit; the water will generally still be cloudy when midterms roll around and often right up to finals).

Especially when many of the processes for forming different formations can be observed in the field and/or the lab. We did field trips where we hiked across gravel and sand beds in late spring after the river had dropped low enough and it was actually possible to watch how different particles separate, for example when coming into slightly deeper water the larger grains would settle out while the fines continued to be carried along. If you know what you’re looking for it’s possible to reconstruct the behavior of a river from the start of spring floods right along to summer (and such reconstructions have been confirmed by putting in cameras, flow meters, and other instruments to record the actual events, then having the events reconstructed from examining the deposits by people without access to the recordings).

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It strikes me, as someone who comes at the question from the text, that YECists have no choice but to hold to the lie that it’s only due to “secularism” that Old Testament scholars deny the validity of YEC – if they don’t hold to that lie then they have to admit that they are holding a worldview that doesn’t come from the scriptures at all.

Though it can be a starting point, as those atheist and agnostic students I knew who – due to studying evolution – concluded there must be a Designer and then set about looking for where that Designer might have communicated with Her/His/Its intelligent creatures.

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Completely unsorted deposits are also a problem–everything from shells larger than my hand down to fine clay that takes weeks to settle out of still water (let alone alternating between sandier and muddier layers over and over in a single deposit) is impossible to get out of a single flood event.

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And that’s why the 75,000 feet of sedimentary rock lie beneath New Orleans. Good explanation. Thanks.

Sure, it can be a starting point, but as Pascal observed long ago, the knowledge of God that can be gleaned from natural revelation is very far from Christian faith.

Addendum
Speaking of New Orleans and silt as a native Texan, the Mississippi River is the reason you have to go miles off the Texas coast before you hit blue water. The Gulf currents carry the silt from the Mississippi all the way down the coast to Mexico, so Texas beaches are shallow, the waves can’t be surfed, and the water is brown as far as the eye can see. Thanks for nothing, geology!

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Newcomers to the coast here often think something is terribly wrong when they look out and see brown surf and then beyond it brown rollers. That was really common once the south jetty here was completed, which focused the tidal current and that started to carve away at the sides of channels, thus pulling off immense amounts of sediments.

There are ash beds in the bay from old and ancient forest fires, and when one of those is affected by the current carving away sediment the surf can turn an ugly dark gray – that really freaks people out! . . . or at least used to; I haven’t heard of one of those in at least a dozen years.
[some people have seriously suggested that the ash zones have explosives placed that would be blown during a heavy storm so all the crud would wash out to sea, the reason being that ash zones tend to be nearly sterile]

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While the white sand beaches of Pensacola and Gulf Shores are deposits of eroded quartz from the Appalachian Mountains.

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Never made it (yet) to the Redneck Riviera. Black sand beaches are more rare, but just as much a testament to erosion and the facts of geology.

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I remember my first visit to a black sands beach. My immediate thought was, “Awesome!”

Then I ran onto it barefoot. :scream:

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Ive been an avid sand-castle builder all my life and was disappointed with Gulf beaches because the sand doesn’t serve as well for making castles.

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I took the legal approach to collecting some of the sand in spite of the “no collecting” rules: empty my shoes into vials.

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That must be due to fine quartz crystals not interlocking like normal sand. And what gives it its squeak when you walk on it. Anyway, a good example of differential sedimentation from the eroded Appalachian mountains, also rich in coal deposits in an attempt to obliquely refer back to the original subject. And, as much of the coal is strip mined, that same erosion is what brought it close enough to the surface to be mined that way.

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The Appalachians are really old mountains; that they have coal deposits shows just how far back coal was formed. It also suggests that they were much more level.

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You were on the wrong side of the Mississippi. Plus, in Texas we like to mix a bit of crude oil with the sand and then drive cars on the beach. You could build a cathedral!

Addendum: In defense of Texas beaches, Padre Island is probably the longest stretch of pristine, undeveloped beach in the US. It happened by historical accident, since all of it was once the property of the King Ranch.

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The claim is correct. I got a tour of Black Thunder Coal Mine (1996?) and saw it for myself.

There are sedimentary impurities in coal, typically ranging from trace amounts of silt to intermittent layers of sandstone or conglomerate.

This article looks interesting, but I’m on mobile and can’t view it myself just now.

GEOLOGIC DISTURBANCES IN ILLINOIS COAL SEAMS http://library.isgs.illinois.edu/Pubs/pdfs/circulars/c530.pdf

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The paper is a representative exhibit of how conventional geology is essential for efficient planning of resource extraction, and how useless the rhetoric of YEC is for any practical commercial application.

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I started into it but decided I need to wait till I can spend the time to read the whole thing. From what I did read it looks fun!

[Yes, I consider geology fun – as we said in glacial geology class, “geology rocks!”]

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Whoa. Not only that, but this is an example of a situation where getting the historical sciences right is literally a matter of life and death. It’s a case where trying to adjust your geology to match your ideology would kill people.

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