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.

Angular Unconformities, Part 3: Lyell on how the rocks were tilted

Continuing in Chapter 5 of Lyell's Elements of Geology here he is discussing the expectation that folded strata would be likely to break under the tension rather than simply fold:

It would be natural to expect the fracture of solid rocks to take place chiefly where the bending of the strata has been sharpest, and such rending may produce ravines giving access to running water and exposing the surface to atmospheric waste. The entire absence, however, of such cracks at points where the strain must have been greatest, as at a, Fig. 63, is often very remarkable, and not always easy of explanation. We must imagine that many strata of limestone, chert, and other rocks which are now brittle, were pliant when bent into their present position. They may have owed their flexibility in part to the fluid matter which they contained in their minute pores, as before described p. 62 and in part to the permeation of sea-water while they were yet submerged. [my emphasis]

Here I just have to comment on his assumption that the rocks must have been damp in order to bend without breaking, which makes perfect sense, just as modeling clay will bend while it's still wet, but break when it has hardened. Some years ago at EvC someone objected to my making this obvious point so I'm happy to see Lyell had the same expectation I had, that rocks must have some water in them in order to bend. Of course even damp clay will break under extreme tension so there must be a limit to the folding tension that could probably be measured.

This is also a welcome observation because it fits with the expectation that the strata were laid down in the Flood. At the very least, since geology also affirms that horizontal strata had to have been formed in water, if the rocks are still damp this does contradict the idea of extreme slowness and the long time span that is supposed to have been needed for the formation of the folds. Lyell himself could have made this deduction from his own observations, but he was under the spell of Hutton's old-earth theory by this time and continues to insist on it despite its being contradicted by his own facts.

Next I'm quoting him on how tilted or upright strata that appear to have been broken off were originally folded, the folds then having been "denuded" -- which was his word for what we would now call "eroded."

We have already explained, Fig. 69, that stratified rocks have usually their strata bent into parallel folds forming anticlinal and synclinal axes, a group of several of these folds having often been subjected to a common movement, and having acquired a uniform strike or direction. In some disturbed regions these folds have been doubled back upon themselves in such a manner that it is often difficult for an experienced geologist to determine correctly the relative age of the beds by superposition. Thus, if we meet with the strata seen in the section, Fig. 72, we should naturally suppose that there were twelve distinct beds, or sets of beds, No. 1 being the newest, and No. 12 the oldest of the series. But this section may perhaps exhibit merely six [87]beds, which have been folded in the manner seen in Fig. 73, so that each of them is twice repeated, the position of one half being reversed, and part of No. 1, originally the uppermost, having now become the lowest of the series.

These phenomena are observable on a magnificent scale in certain regions in Switzerland, in precipices often more than 2000 feet in perpendicular height, and there are flexures not inferior in dimensions in the Pyrenees. The upper part of the curves seen in this diagram, Fig. 73, and expressed in fainter lines, has been removed by what is called denudation, to be afterwards explained.

I had also wondered about this possibility but I'd tended to think that in the case of angular unconformities the strata had been broken and forced upright in one direction, then sheared by the friction between them and the horizontal strata above which formed a sort of ceiling. Instead the strata may have been folded and the bent section sheared off in the same way.

In that case the order of the strata as Lyell describes them, those on one side of the fold reversing the order of those on the other, would be the evidence. But where the strata are identical, as in the case of Siccar Point, that might not be easy to determine. At Siccar Point, however, the formation does continue far enough to show a section where the strata were folded, as in Lyell's Fig. 78, making the evidence in that case.

Also Siccar Point demonstrates my own expectation that the layer right above the tilted section would be a different kind of rock, which it seems to me would allow for easier sliding between them when pressure is exerted against the lower strata. At Siccar Point it's red sandstone in the horizontal strata above and greywacke in the tilted strata beneath. Most of Lyell's comments and illustrations also indicate that there were once more strata above that have eroded away, which also fits the model of angular unconformities I have in mind. Here's the whole model spelled out:

• The strata were ALL in place before the tilting occurred, the entire geologic column.



• The rocks were still damp which explains their folding rather than breaking, so it was not long after the Flood that the tilting occurred.



• The folding occurred in a lower section of the strata under pressure from the side or beneath, either volcanic or tectonic.



• The force was dissipated at a point where the upper strata were resistant because of their great weight. That is, at a point where the weight of the upper strata was about equal to the force from beneath as it reached that level.



• The immediately superior layer was of a different type of rock, most probably a harder sediment, than the immediately lower one, allowing for slippage between the sections.



• The eroded area usually seen between the lower tilted and upper horizontal sections was produced by the abrasion between them as the lower buckled and slid beneath the upper.



• Where only a few layers or even only one remain over the tilted part of the rock the higher layers were most likely removed by remaining waters of the Flood.

Angular Unconformities: An Alternative Interpretation Part 2: Charles Lyell Proves My Point

Now I want to go into more detail in the attempt to demonstrate that angular unconformities are created after the whole stack of layers is laid down, which contradicts the current interpretation of angular unconformities as gradually developing and requiring a very long time to form.

Since the Grand Canyon - Grand Staircase area has the advantage of showing pretty much the entire Geologic Column from "Precambrian" to "Quaternary" or "Recent" rock, it makes the best display of undisturbed horizontality of ALL the strata up through the entire stack. The whole area was clearly completely undisturbed until the canyons and cliffs were cut into the strata and the area was raised and tilted and mounded, all probably brought about by the volcanic activity in the area. Even this activity didn't disturb the strata for thousands of miles, it merely slightly tilted and cut into them.

The Great Unconformity at the base of the Grand Canyon I've already explained as most likely caused by the same volcanic force AFTER all the strata were in place. It's an educated conjecture in that case (just as the build-tilt-erode-build interpretation is conjecture), but there is another angular unconformity in the region that I think clearly shows that it had to have been created in that order. Here are some diagrams:


Click to see enlarged. This is an official government drawing showing the whole area from the Grand Canyon through the Grand Staircase.

Below is the north end of the Staircase from this same diagram showing the angular unconformity to the north of the Hurricane Fault. This unconformity was apparently created by the slipping of the fault line. The land dropped about 4000 feet and tilted the strata both against the nearly-vertical fault line and against the layer above marked “V” which remains horizontal.

Perhaps this section fell simultaneously with the raising of the main body of the strata. Probably the volcanic eruption indicated in the magma dike which exits in a lava flow at the very top of the Staircase was the cause of the whole displacement.

Since we see the same stack of strata on both sides of the Hurricane Fault, in the same order, but one side is tilted except for the horizontal Clarion layer “V” and the other is continuous, all parallel, this ought to suggest that the unconformity was created in one event. This should bring into question Hutton’s interpretation of angular unconformities as requiring a great deal of time for tilting and erosion before the laying down of new horizontal strata. In this case the horizontal layer was almost certainly already there as it is continuous with the one to the right above, and the whole structure appears to have been formed in one event.

I've been trying for some time to come up with a good model for how I think this happens -- that is, how lower strata could be folded or tilted beneath higher strata without disturbing the higher strata -- and although I can describe it I can't think of practical examples that demonstrate it.

The example comes to mind of the trick of pulling a tablecloth out from under a full table setting of dishes and cups and so on without disturbing them and that does demonstrate that force can be applied to an object beneath other objects without disturbing them. The conditions required for this to work would be heavier solid upper objects and more flexible lower objects, which is exactly what I have in mind, but of course this example doesn't exactly DO what an angular unconformity does. There must be many other examples but I keep drawing a blank.

I've also imagined an experiment with modeling-clay strata but that's really beyond my means to set up and it would be much too hard to recreate anything like the circumstances of the actual strata on such a small scale. But then I found a description of exactly that sort of experiment having already been done, in Chapter 5 of Elements of Geology by Charles Lyell, friend of Darwin and popularizer of Hutton's theory of a very old earth and the principle of uniformitarianism. He was trying to explain how folded strata form, such as in this sketch on the same page:

Folding by Lateral Movement.—An experiment was made by Sir James Hall, with a view of illustrating the manner in which such strata, assuming them to have been originally horizontal, may have been forced into their present position. A set of layers of clay were placed under a weight, and their opposite ends pressed towards each other with such force as to cause them to approach more nearly together. On the removal of the weight, the layers of clay were found to be curved and folded, so as to bear a miniature resemblance to the strata in the cliffs. Chap 5, p. 76

I've been looking for a way to illustrate the upright tilting of strata but this experiment demonstrated how they are folded or buckled. It's very important for my purposes that he placed the clay layers under a weight before applying lateral pressure. Lyell doesn't explain this but it seems intuitively necessary to do this. What I've been claiming is that the weight of strata above is a necessary resistance to the tilting of the strata beneath in the creation of angular unconformities; that is, the strata above would have to have already been in place before the tilting occurred, as opposed to the accepted theory which puts the tilting first, then erosion, then the laying down of strata above. The heavy and horizontal weight overhead would force the tilting or folding strata to form a horizontal upper surface, probably the result of violent erosion from friction between them and the upper layer as the force was applied.

On the present theory it's hard to see how tilted strata without a weight overhead could be anything but very irregular and jagged. And this is also where I question the idea that erosion at this point would level such a formation. I also question the idea of a hiatus or time gap during which the strata are no longer forming. What could cause that cessation? And if the strata did keep on forming after such a tilting of strata the new sediments would be forced to settle in the crevises between the jagged or folded uprights, they wouldn't just neatly arrange themselves in a new horizontal layer lying flat across the top of them.

Lyell even explains the absence of upper horizontal strata in some such formations this way:

the ... upper portion, being supposed to have been carried away by denudation, or that action of water which will be explained in the next chapter.

He next discusses an experiment which comes even closer to what I've been envisioning:

We may still more easily illustrate the effects which a lateral thrust might produce on flexible strata, by placing several pieces of differently coloured cloths upon a table, and when they are spread out horizontally, cover them with a book. Then apply other books to each end, and force them towards each other. The folding of the cloths (see Fig. 58) will imitate those of the bent strata; the incumbent book being slightly lifted up, and no longer touching the two volumes on which it rested before, because it is supported by the tops of the anticlinal ridges formed by the curved cloths. In like manner there can be no doubt that the squeezed strata, although laterally condensed and more closely packed, are yet elongated and made to rise upward, in a direction perpendicular to the pressure.

I would never have thought of using CLOTH, but it makes the point beautifully. Again a weight is placed above and the "strata" are shown to buckle just as real strata do under the weight with pressure applied from the side.

Lyell has accepted Hutton's view of an old earth and his principle of uniformitarianism, so throughout this book he assumes extremely slow processes for all the formations, but what's interesting is that he pictures a weight over the folding and tilting strata as essential to the explanation, and that contradicts Hutton's idea that the strata were FIRST tilted and THEN the upper strata were laid down over them. In fact that was essential to Hutton's idea of an old earth and now Lyell has shown that it's not necessary at all, apparently without grasping the implication that an old earth is not needed to explain these formations.

As you read on in this chapter of his book you find him showing how upright strata were probably originally folded, giving some good examples, including one of Siccar Point as part of a larger formation that includes such folded strata. He then describes the unconformity at Siccar Point in Hutton's terms:

...it is evident that a period had elapsed between the production of the two sets of strata, and that, during this interval, the older series had been tilted and disturbed. Afterwards the upper series was thrown down in horizontal strata upon it.

The model of the cloth strata between the books shows that this is most likely not the real order of events, that the weight of already-existing upper horizontal strata would have been necessary to the formation of the tilted strata.

I've also been imagining a tilting following a breaking of lower strata, but Lyell brings up the very likely possibility that the lower strata were originally folded and the bent or folded section was lost. He discusses only the case of their being lost through water denudation, but in the examples I have in mind they'd have been sheared off in the process of being forced under a resistant horizontal weight of strata above them. After the shearing what is left is simply tilted strata without evidence of the prior folding. I still think it possible that in some cases there was first a breaking and then a tilting and shearing off without folding. In fact I think that's most likely what happened in the angular unconformity illustrated above at the far north of the Grand Staircase. Maybe Lyell even considers that somewhere. His book is quite a tome but I expect to keep reading it.

So, the explanation for the unconformity at Siccar point is that there was originally a great depth of horizontal strata there just as there was everywhere else around the world after the Flood of Noah. Then tectonic or volcanic forces tilted or folded a block of the LOWER strata, which were sheared off at the top under the weight of higher strata that remained horizontal though they may have been raised by the force. Then it was probably the rush of receding Flood waters that scoured off the layers above those that remain. And the same thing occurred in the formation of the Great Unconformity at the base of the Grand Canyon except that a huge depth of strata remained in place above it, as only the very highest strata, those above the Kaibab layer that continue in the Grand Staircase to the north, were scoured off by the receding Flood waters.

I really think we could put QED to this here. Lyell himself in the very act of supporting Hutton's idea of extremely slow geological formation ignores Hutton's own inciting example in favor of an example that demonstrates that lower strata can be deformed under strata that remain horizontal, which does not require millions of years, but could easily have occurred in the time frame of the Flood of Noah and subsequent tectonic and volcanic pressures afterward.
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***Blog Post Powered by Prayer***

This one was definitely powered by prayer more than others I've done as I was struggling to find the best models for what I've been envisioning and the Lord answered prayer for those models by leading me to Lyell's book, the most striking example being the cloth strata, but I credit the Lord for all the other ideas as well. I couldn't think a useful thought without his guidance. Of course, all errors are my own.