You are referring to your calculations to try to explain how the Sauk transgression could have held in suspension 3 million cubic kilometers of mostly ocean sediments–just gradually depositing them over 75% of North America–as this marine (Sauk) incursion moved at only 1/4 inch per year.
But let’s back up to what caused the Sauk transgression to begin with. Sea level during this megasequence has been figured at about 300 meters–that’s 984 feet–above today’s sea level. And, one source says that seafloor spreading was a significant contributor to this flooding.
So, just try to imagine…sea levels are several hundreds of feet above the continental margins, as they flood onto the continents. But somehow, they only creep onto–and across–the continents at the almost imperceptible rate of 1/4 inch per year?
I’m not insulting you. Insulting you would have been assuming that you had actually read these “arguments” against the integrity of Scripture–and then had believed them. I give you more credit than this.
In other words, you have assumed that both accounts should be chronological–when in fact, they are not. Rather, they are topical.
In Genesis 2, our attention is not directed to the whole Creation–and certainly not to its chronology. Rather, our attention zooms-in on God’s creating Adam, then Eve–from Adam–, and their placement and work responsibilities in the Garden.
The sea level rise was gradual, which is consistent with a slow incursion. There was nothing holding anything back at the shorelines (sea level is already above the continental shelves).
“Creationist source”? And which one was that? I don’t remember using one.
So, check this one out:
“many Konservat-Lagerstätten share biological and geological processes such as rapid burial … Deep burial by a single event, such as a storm, enhances the chances of exceptional preservation… These Ediacaran organisms were buried rapidly in event beds, either by storm deposits, turbidites… Rapid burial creates a microenvironment around a carcass where bacterial activity rapidly consumes available oxygen…The fossilization of a carcass involves the interplay of rapid burial , decay, precipitation of minerals such as phosphate or pyrite, and subsequent diagenetic changes that occur on a geological time scale.”
Yet, articles on sequence stratigraphy, addressing specifically the six megasequences (on North America, they are the Sauk, Tippecanoe, Kaskakia, Absaroka, Zuni, and Tejas), speak of the ocean sediments being deposited by the transgressing flows that flooded the continents–not sediments that “seas” themselves generated after being on the continents for hundreds of millions of years.
“Cratonic sequences are also known as “megasequences”, “stratigraphic sequences”, “Sloss sequences”, “supersequences” or simply “sequences”. They are geologic evidence of relative sea level rising and then falling (transgressing and regressing), thereby depositing varying layers ofsedimentonto the craton , now expressed as sedimentary rock. Places such as the Grand Canyon are a good visual example of this process, demonstrating the changes between layers deposited over time as the ancient environment changed.”
I will go verse by verse, giving my summary and interpretation of what Peter is saying…then, I would like to see where–specifically–you don’t agree…if this is o.k. with you.
3:3,4. Peter warns of “mockers,” who–led by their own lusts–mock the promise of Jesus’ return by saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.”
In other words, their justification for mocking the promise of Jesus’ return to judge the world is that no such big judgment has ever happened before…and so, it’s not going to happen in the future either.
3:5,6. So Peter counters their claim by saying there actually has been a big judgment upon this earth before–a fact that has “escaped their notice” (that is, figuratively hidden itself from these mockers). This big judgment was one in which God used water to “destroy the world.”
So, Kendel, do you disagree with anything I have pointed out here? If so, what and why?
The only thing I have called “scoffing” or “mocking” is just that. I have not said that people who disagree with my argumentation are “mockers.” But whenever anyone has expressly ridiculed–made fun of–what the Bible states about the Flood in Genesis 6-9, I have warned them against doing so…just as Peter does in 2 Peter 3.
And, just as with any biblical warning, it is made both out of faithfulness toward God, and concern even for those who mock.
This badly misconstrues sequence stratigraphy, which is not primarily about oceanic transport of sediment at all, the key concept being the interface of land and sea at the shoreline, and the stacking pattern of sedimentation as fluvial and deep basin deposits track the movement of the shoreline in response to sea level change over geological time.
Thanks for including these videos. They do explain what is involved in transgressive and regressive flows.
But now, we must see them as applied to the six major ocean floodings/transgressions evidenced in the six megasequences. In fact, these megasequences (or, first-order sequences) actually contain many sequences of higher orders (2nd through 5th order)–which evidence much shorter times of deposition; often called “cycles,” they are like pulses of ocean flows within the larger megasequences.
The animations of transgression/regression make it look like the geological sequences were confined to the beach. However, these ocean floodings actually extended across the continents, just as seen in Sloss sequence diagrams. In fact, notice the following quote from a Columbia study:
“Sauk Sequence: rising sea level in the Cambrian and Ordovician (probably due to fast seafloor spreading) flooded the Laurentian craton resulting in shallow marine deposition; sandstones gave way to shales then carbonates as the shoreline transgressed into the middle of the craton”
So, here, rising sea level (which has been estimated at 900 feet above today’s sea level) “flooded the Laurentian craton” (or North America). And this flooding resulted in "shallow marine (ocean!) deposition upon the continent. In fact, the shoreline (ocean environment) ended up “transgressing into the middle of the craton” as sandstones from these ocean sediments were deposited under shale, which was deposited under carbonates (limestone).
In fact, other studies identify these sediments as being “genetically related”–which means they were all adjacent to each other in the ocean environment prior to being transported onto the continent: the sands (to become sandstone) from the beach…the clays (to become shale) from shallow marine…and the carbonates (to become limestone) from deep marine.
So, while it’s true that oceans can generate their own sediments, the sediments that ended up as sedimentary rock layers in the fossil record were primarily transported onto the continent by flooding waters from the ocean (although eroded siliciclastic sediments, say, from the Rockies and Appalachians became mixed in–in fact, likely eroded by the ocean floodings themselves).
How does “a slow incursion” explain the existence of all the erosion zones (unconformities) bounding the sequences–of various orders?
How does an imperceptibly moving (1/4 inch per year) ocean water incursion erode, first, basement granite (even eroding out large boulders) resulting in the Great Unconformity, and then, eroding surfaces of sedimentary layers in megasequences, as well as in shorter sequences within megasequences?
Yes, I just addressed this. The diagrams in the videos do give the mistaken impression that sequence stratigraphy is just a shoreline development. However, it is not–at all–just as other articles I have quoted in this thread abundantly bear out.
In fact, I just earlier sent you a quote that speaks of this “shoreline” being pushed by ocean transgressions (of the megasequences) something like “to the middle of the continent.”
So, Ron, it would help put these diagrams into better perspective if you spend some times studying each megasequence (with its parasequences). In fact, sequence stratigraphy addresses the deposition of sedimentary rock layers covering the continents–not just layering on the shoreline.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
413
What makes my wryly amusing, knowingly folksy, actually friendly comment testy?
America never recovered intellectually from expanding beyond the elastic limits of European civilization. This site demonstrates that acutely for me, that and the horror of January 6th. I used to have confidence in America, its progress over staggering obstacles. But it’s not enough. I was an apologist for America from my childhood. John Wayne casts a giant shadow. As does Bugs Bunny. But now I see it all as deterministic. As Solzhenitsyn said, as I falsely recall, if I wanted to destroy a country, I wouldn’t give it too little. I’d give it too much.
So I fact checked that - you ought to try it - it was your awesome, beautiful, sublime John Steinbeck
“If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, sick.”
As P.P. Arnold’s three year old son says at the end of the Nice’s '68 (what a year! I was 14) America (2nd Amendment)
“America is pregnant with promise and anticipation, but is murdered by the hand of the inevitable”
America is the worst and best of cultures.
That’s what evolution does: expands into possibility space. Man.
No I’m not. It didn’t.
Over five million years.
Why should I imagine Alaska level tsunami held stationary like the parted Red Sea?
“But somehow, they only creep onto–and across–the continents at the almost imperceptible rate of 1/4 inch per year?
A quarter inch a year is a huge amount if you accept deep time.In our current time, “The global mean sea level (GMSL) in 2020 was the highest ever measured. GMSL reconstructions based on tide gauge observations show a rise of 21cm from 1900 to 2020 at an average rate of 1.7 mm/year .” At 1.7 mm per year, which is less that 0.07 inches a year, the results will be devastating over time.
It seems you are misreading some of the sources you quote. In simplified terms, sediment is deposited near the shore by rivers through erosion of the highlands. When the sea level rises, the shoreline moves up. The river continue to deposit sediment on the higher shore. The rising water does not move the sand on the shore up except by currents and storms on a local basis, but rather more sand is brought down by the rivers and is deposited there, with the lighter silt settling out in stiller or deeper water. Oversimplified, but the end result is that while the rising seawater is the cause of the different layers, it is not the means of the deposition…
Perhaps that is obvious to most, but seems something you have misinterpreted, and I would not want others led astray.
2 Likes
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
416
That was our friend in his a-logicality Phil. I misquoted originally.
Sorry, I knew it wasn’t you, This quoting stuff gets confusing when you are old and we have requotes on requotes. I will try to edit and clarify a bit.
The shoreline anchors and provides the reference point for the far more extensive system, which shifts back and forth as alluvial plains, river delta’s, shallow water, and drop-offs respond to changes in sea level. The entire basin constitutes the accommodation space for deposition.
Of course, a tsunami does not have a shoreline.
From the development of sequence strati-graphic concepts started in the first place with the study of the transition zone between marine and non marine environments, where the relationship of facies and stratigraphic surfaces is easier to observe from the shoreline, the application of sequence stratigraphy was gradually expanded in both landward and basinward directions, until a coherent basin-wide model that includes the stacking patterns expected in both fully fluvial and deep-marine successions was finally established. The importance of the coastline, as the link between the marine and non marine portions of the basin, is also reflected by the fact that the reference curve of base-level changes that is used to define the four main events of a stratigraphic cycle, and implicitly the timing of all systems tracts and strati-graphic surfaces (Fig. 1.7), is centered around the fluctuations in accommodation at the shoreline—this issue, which is the key to understanding sequence stratigraphic principles
“The Sauk transgression was one of the most dramatic global marine transgressions in Earth history. It is recorded by deposition of predominantly Cambrian non-marine to shallow marine (600-feet deep, DP) sheet sandstones unconformably above basement rocks far into the interiors of many continents.”
So, the Sauk transgression was not flooding of ocean waters–but no ocean sediments. Rather, it included “shallow marine” sediments. And, such sediments are as deep as 600 feet in the ocean.
And, notice: these ocean sediments are deposited “far into the interiors of many continents.” So, these are not just “shoreline” sedimentation processes.
So, clearly the Sauk transgression was not some interior sea that generated its own sediments (though it likely picked up eroded sediments as it scoured the craton)–rather, its sediments were “marine.” Marine sediments that were “deposited” “far into the interiors” by the Sauk flooding waters.