Originally posted by nickybutt
You have countless times been referenced to talkorigins website's list of claims:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html
If you had spent just a few minutes looking through the list, you would have found this:
Claim CD103:
The entire geologic column is based on the assumption of evolution.
Response:
1. The geologic column was outlined by ...[text shortened]... it wasn't true, in which case you are a liar.
So which is it, are you dumb or are you lying?
There are a number of locations on the earth where all ten periods of the Phanerozoic geologic column have been assigned. However, this does not mean that the geological column is real. Firstly, the presence or absence of all ten periods is not the issue, because the thickness of the sediment pile, even in those locations, is only a small fraction (8–16% or less) of the total thickness of the hypothetical geologic column. Without question, most of the column is missing in the field.
Secondly, those locations where it has been possible to assign all ten periods represent less than 0.4% of the earth’s surface, or 1% if the ocean basins are excluded. Obviously it is the exception, rather than the rule, to be able to assign all of the ten Phanerozoic periods to the sedimentary pile in any one location on the earth. It does not engender confidence in the reality of the geological column when it is absent 99% of the time.
Thirdly, even where the ten periods have been assigned, the way in which they were assigned can be quite subjective. It is a well known fact, for example, that many unfossiliferous Permian rocks are ‘dated’ as such solely because they happen to be sandwiched between faunally-dated Carboniferous and faunally-dated Triassic rocks. Without closer examination, it is impossible to determine how many of the ‘ten Phanerozoic systems superposed’ have been assigned on the basis of index fossils (by which each of the Phanerozoic systems have been defined) and how many have been assigned by indirect methods such as lithological similarity, comparable stratigraphic level, and schematic depictions. Clearly, if the periods in these locations were assigned by assuming that the geological column was real, then it is circular reasoning to use the assigned ten periods to argue the reality of the column.
Finally, the geological column is a hypothetical concept that can always be rescued by special pleading. A number of standard explanations are used to account for missing geological periods, including erosion and non-deposition. Clear field evidence, such as unconformities, is not necessarily needed before these explanations are invoked. Similarly a range of standard explanations is used to account for the fossils when their order is beyond what the column would predict. These include reworking, stratigraphic leaking, and long-range fossils. Even if all ten periods of the column had never been assigned to one local stratigraphic section anywhere on the earth, the concept of the geological column would still be accepted as fact by conventional uniformitarian geologists.
To the diluviologist this means, of course, that only the local succession has to be explained by Flood-related processes. Very seldom do all ten geologic systems have to be accounted for in terms of Flood deposition.
There is no escaping the fact that the Phanerozoic geologic column remains essentially non-existent. It should be obvious, to all but the most biased observers, that it is the anti-creationists who misrepresent the geologic facts. The geologic column does not exist to any substantive extent, and scientific creationists are correct to point this out.
http://www.trueorigin.org/geocolumn.asp
Does the goelogic column prove Evolution?
01 Jun '05 08:17
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