Geology course at EvC

Somebody got the message about how science (in this case Geology) SHOULD be presented but I wonder if he'll do what's needed with it.

Dr. Adequate has acknowldged the problem I've objected to over and over here about how all we're ever given is the CONCLUSIONS Geology (or Evolutionary Biology) has arrived at without the thinking that led to them.

He even acknowledged that the textbooks we creationists are always told to read don't address these questions but just try to cram what they consider to be established dogma into the reader.

On second and third thoughts and pondering his list of topics I'm less than thrilled with the course design, as noted below. It's nice to have the familiar problem acknowledged that he's outlined above but I'm now doubting that he's really going to address it where it counts. Wait and see I guess.

Introduction

Course objectives

The objective of this course is to show how it is possible to reconstruct the past history of the Earth from our present observation of the rocks.

It will differ from other textbooks in that it will place a strong emphasis on asking and answering the question: "How do we know?" Most textbooks report certain aspects of geological knowledge simply as things that are known: for example, that granite is an igneous rock, or that sandstone with certain properties is aeolian; or that the Earth's core is iron; but without addressing, or at least without systematically addressing, the question of how these things are known in such a way as to satisfy the doubts of the skeptical or the inquisitiveness of the curious.

As a result, the average geology textbook does fairly poor service to the skeptical, or to those who wish to debate and convince the skeptical. It also, in my view, does a disservice to the science of geology itself: for the story of geology is in effect the world's longest-running detective story, and it is more interesting if geology is presented as such than as a collection of facts handed down from on high.

Course outline

Finding the right order in which to structure a course in geology is perhaps the most perplexing decision facing its author. No solution is ideal, because (with the exception of the definition of basic terms, which clearly should come first) it would be best if every topic could be discussed last, so that the reader can come to it with the rest of the course as context. As this is impossible, some sort of compromise has to be made.

The contents of the course will be as follows:

(1) Rocks and minerals: in which I explain what is a mineral, what is a rock, what are sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks.

Very basic stuff which I believe I know quite well from various trips around the internet as needed.

(2) Weathering and erosion: a look at mechanical weathering, chemical weathering, and erosion.

Not sure this discussion would add anything to my store of knowledge either.

(3) Sedimentology: a systematic look at all the different types of sediment and their corresponding sedimentary rocks --- peat and coal; glacial till and tillite; deserts and aeolian sandstone; coccoliths and chalk; etc, etc, etc.

I also believe I'm up on all these categories just as phenomena. But perhaps he'll touch on some area that is controversial for a Floodist. We'll see.

(4) Plate tectonics: in which we describe how it is known that plates move, what is know of the mechanisms, and what effects this has in terms of faulting, folding, orogeny, ophiolites, terranes, etc.

I believe I'm up on these things too with the exception of ophiolites, which a quick glance at Wikipedia takes care of anyway.

Second thought, terrane is a complicated subject that would be interesting to see discussed but I have no reason to think it poses any particular difficulties for a Floodist

(5) Stratigraphy: a discussion of actualism, of Steno's principles, of way-up marks, of cross-cutting relationships, of the geological column, of index fossils, and so forth. This may also be a good place to discuss paleoclimatology.

I guess it depends on what he does with this stuff whether it's going to be of any use to a Floodist or not.

(6) Absolute dating: those dating methods other than the relative methods of stratigraphy. This will include a look at some of the methods of more doubtful value, such as fluoride dating and racemization.

I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get much out of this discussion because I'm familiar with how it goes with evolutionists. But again, we'll see.

At that point I shall have done what I set out to do, in that the reader will then have a grasp of the principles of historical geology. However, it may be that the readership will have further questions. In particular, the reader may want to see some historical geology actually done, or in other words to see some case studies. It may be possible to continue the discussion along these lines.

Awfully awfully basic as presented here.

Note on sources

It will not be necessary to give references for notions which are the common property of geologists, such as the definition of a mineral or the fact that granite is felsic. However, I shall provide references to the more abstruse or particular facts to which I allude.

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Pressie for volunteering to review the material. Any remaining errors are, of course, my fault.

If nothing else, probably I'll be able to conclude that I didn't need the geology course after all that the evolutionists keep telling us we need. I didn't think I did because I've picked up so much off the internet over the years, but it would be nice to have it confirmed that a course isn't really going to offer anything different.

The question How do they know? isn't crucial for such things as how rocks form but for how they arrive at conclusions such as the claim that a particular rock layer was formed in air while another was formed in water, and mostly all the claims about ancient landscapes -- how they identify ancient deserts or bodies of water and how long they supposedly persisted. It's the unwitnessed past abaout which they make such flat-out assertions of knowingness that really needs the answers to How do they know this or that, not so much the factual stuff like what rocks are made of.

And although I know there is no sensible answer, there are also the questions of how they got themselves convinced that the fossils represent creatures that lived and died on that spot, how they think a series of flat slabs of rock could represent a time period at all, how they think loose sediments deposited in some cases over a hundred thousand miles of area could become such flat horizontal rock without enormous pressure from above, how they think that a bit of loose gravel at the interface between two flat slabs of rock constitutes the sort of erosion that occurs on exposed surface of land.

More reading in Lyell prompts a brief stock-taking

Been reading in Lyell, not just his Elements of Geology, but also the Principles of Geology which I finally found online. The internet is a gift from God.

In the Principles Lyell goes into the history of theories in this area which is quite fascinating, such as the very strange ideas about the nature of fossils which some had entertained down the centuries, and of course arguments for and against the Flood. His entire Chapter 3 is devoted to this history.

Wishing I didn't have to work so I could put more time into this. Wishing I could afford more books. Wishing I weren't so old and physically disabled for anything as strenuous as poking around in fossiliferous strata. Never had the slightest interest in geology until I began reading up on the creation-evolution disputes, and now I can appreciate why people would choose to go into this field, completely apart from the two theories at issue I mean: what the earth is made of has become interesting to me. I used to see it as nothing but "dirt," dirt of different qualities of course, such that some of it would grow a luxuriant garden while some was death to all living things, the alkali flats of the desert areas for instance, but all just varieties of dirt, rocks, dirt, rocks and more dirt. Not dirty dirt, just dirt.

Of course my overarching interest remains the evidence for the Flood. Now I see the earth as a fascinating collection of chemical and physical ingredients in various combinations and situations that have been scattered and rearranged by the Flood, from some primordial condition of perfection I can barely even guess at. Everywhere I look I see the Flood, just as everywhere they look, establishment geologists see evidence against the Flood. Including Lyell. Although it took Hutton to convince him.

Obviously they have a different sort of Flood in mind than I have.

In any case, it seems to me that arguments for the Flood would benefit from more knowledge of the history of these ideas I'm finding in Lyell.

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As I continue to read, sometimes going back and forth between Lyell's Elements and his Principles, I also have to express some gratitude for these writings. They are thorough detailed simple readable descriptions of actual phenomena, something that is hardly ever found, in my experience, in the usual scientific reports having to do with geology or biology wherever they assert various evolutionary interpretations. What you get is interpretation presented as fact (a fossil creature defined by its supposed age for instance) instead of simple description of the phenomena themselves. SO happy to find in Lyell just such a simple description of where fossils are found and what kinds they are, and how their presentation LEADS to the interpretation currently in favor, as in this description from Lyell's Elements, Chapter 1:

If a stratified arrangement, and the rounded form of pebbles, are alone sufficient to lead us to the conclusion that certain rocks originated under water, this opinion is farther confirmed by the distinct and independent evidence of fossils, so abundantly included in the earth’s crust. By a fossil is meant any body, or the traces of the existence of any body, whether animal or vegetable, which has been buried in the earth by natural causes. Now the remains of animals, especially of aquatic species, are found almost everywhere imbedded in stratified rocks, and sometimes, in the case of limestone, they are in such abundance as to constitute the entire mass of the rock itself. Shells and corals are the most frequent, and with them are often associated the bones and teeth of fishes, fragments of wood, impressions of leaves, and other organic substances. Fossil shells, of forms such as now abound in the sea, are met with far inland, both near the surface, and at great depths below it. They occur at all heights above the level of the ocean, having been observed at elevations of more than 8000 feet in the Pyrenees, 10,000 in the Alps, 13,000 in the Andes, and above 18,000 feet in the Himalaya.*

These shells belong mostly to marine testacea, but in some places exclusively to forms characteristic of lakes and rivers. Hence it is concluded that some ancient strata were deposited at the bottom of the sea, and others in lakes and estuaries.

Of course the OBVIOUS interpretation that OUGHT to spring to the mind of anyone in Lyell's day since it was still being defended in respectable geological circles, is THE FLOOD. Good grief, it's SO obvious and yet even Lyell is now blinded by the mere speculative imaginations of Hutton and others.

Diary more than anything else

I'm not much of a blogger if the objective is to make contacts with others of similar interests, and I've thought that eventually I would go out and connect with other blogs on my favorite topics; but I've come to think of my blogs as more like a diary or journal, a place to organize my thoughts. I enjoy it when someone does come by and comment, even if the comment is loudly negative, as many are of course on the subjects I pursue.

Lately I've been blogging less and reading more. Still in my favorite subjects. Bought some books I really can't afford and am having a very enjoyable time of catching up on the history of science. I wish I could afford more. In fact I wish I could live inside the most complete libary on earth. The internet is wonderful that way, but it's not complete and I do get frustrated at times.

I've been reading mostly in the history of geology lately. I started out reading in genetics but found myself in geology before long. Both of course are related to the issues surrounding evolution. Read a biography of James Hutton, "the father of modern geology," very entertaining as well as informative. Accumulating a big wish list at Amazon on geology books, such as Hutton's friend John Playfair's Illustrations of Huttonian Theory. I wish I had access to a whole slew of pictures of the geological formations on which Hutton developed his theory of the earth -- I may find that in a more modern book on geology, of which I have one in my wish list too. Again, the internet is a great source for these things, I just wish there was more available. I also wish it were less expensive to print out the sources that ARE available. If wishes were horses .... Academic books are often prohibitively expensive. Sometimes you can find a decent deal on used books through Amazon but if the book is a classic the used copies will be too expensive too.

I can't go out and look at these formations for myself so pictures are absolutely necessary. There are photos and diagrams of Hutton's Siccar Point available on the internet: Here's a good one and the comment about how Hutton simply looked at it and "realized" the earth was old is priceless. This site speaks of "environments of deposition." I find this very amusing but of course geologists take it seriously.

I have plenty of thoughts about Hutton's theory, but I'm not going to post them here right now.