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So rather than deal with what I've said, you prefer to pick at my spelling and throw names

Oh, I dealt with what you said. But the manner in which you say it is also something that can be interpreted. It says here's someone who can write lengthy, opinionated posts using concepts with which he's so unfamiliar he hasn't either seen them in print or bothered to look up in a dictionary.

People actually study sedimentation. I'm shocked to my foundations.

You claimed geologists hadn't thought about it. Some geologists have made it their life work, and that has precious little to do with 'liquefaction'. Other geologists actively study how sedimentary deposits are transformed into rock.

Why would I take your word for it when you're merely stating the obvious - that presumeably ancient deposits appear at surface level while then applying your assumptions to them and stating those assumptives as fact.

We were talking tertiary and quaternary strata here. Do try to keep up. Pleistocene and late quaternary deposits aren't ancient, and largely they aren't 'rock' either. They still show stratigraphy that can be integrated into a self-consistitent and logical picture of the last 10 million years or so, on the great plains.

We're left with the fact that In Nebraska and countless places around the planet, supposedly ancient deposits are found laying at surface level and we're supposed to assume that a flood must have uncovered them or something. One only need look to the find overseas of the remains of a dinosaur rivaling the size of T-rex which is dated to the time of T-rex not by where it is found; but, by other assumptive measures, as it was found at surface level.

Where are there dinosaur fossils in western Nebraska? But OK, let's ignore your total ignorance of geology; the central US hasn't seen a lot of mountain-building in the last several hundred million years, so deposits are alternately brought to the surface by erosion or covered by sediment deposited by wind and water. I honestly don't see a problem with either process. In the west, plate tectonics has pushed up deeper deposits, and that's why you find T rex skeletons in places like Montana and South Dakota. You probably don't believe in plate tectonics either, though. Presumably earthquakes and volcanoes are acts of God, eh?

That or we assume that something uncovered the bones. Then we start making other assumptions that perhaps there used to be a mountain there and erosion wiped it out, else the remains would be much deeper down. No signs of an eroded mountain,

You think there are no signs of eroded mountains in South Dakota and Montana? Have you ever been to either state?

Must be some way to explain it - and when we dig into our book of theories, assumptions and postulations, we get - well let's go use carbon dating to figure it out so that the assumption is hidden in the mechanism. Applying terms to things doesn't mean you have any clue about them; but, the reason you apply terms is to give that appearance. Ages for Dinosaurs are a part of this.

We use carbon dating to get ages for dinosaurs. Sure.

And the label Pleistocene is applied as a label to a time frame assumed from the assumptions of strata dating methods and from the assumptions of carbon dating.

We can't date back a significant way into the Pleistocene with 14C dating. However, Pleistocene deposits are recent, near the surface, and we can easily extend what we know about the present and the recent past back to the Pleistocene.

One wonders why it is that when the footprint of a man is found inside the footprint of a T-rex and frozen into stone - fossilized into rock that it becomes neccessary for scientists to cut the footprints of both out of the ground and cart them off, then claim it to be a non-existant happenstance.

I've found mammals and turtle shells and other fossils in Tertiary deposits; I found a little jawbone two years ago that belonged to a Mesohippus. I've looked at the strata in W. Nebraska myself, and traced the ash deposits from volcanoes that let us date them. It's straightforward, and I don't have to take any geologist's word for it. I can look at 9 million year old ash layers, from, say, the Ashfall site just north of here, under a microscope, and I can compare them with what came out of Mount St Helens. On the other hand, I've never seen human footprints in a rock next to a T-rex's, but I'd be delighted to go look at this find if you'd tell me where I could do so.

Geology isn't based on assumptions. It's based on a huge body of careful observational work. But hey, in 2003 anyone can go on the internet, totally ignorant of that work, and claim it's all speculation.

Havoc had mentioned the writings of a Dr. Walt Brown to back up his statements in an earlier post. I went looking for Dr. Brown, and I found The Hydroplate Theory.)

Assumptions
Every scientific theory that is used to explain an ancient, unobserved and unrepeatable event, has some assumptions about the starting conditions that existed before the event. The hydroplate theory has the following three:

Figure 6: Cross-Section of Preflood Earth. The layers from top to bottom: ancient sea, granite, subterranean water chamber, basalt, the Moho, mantle.

Interconnected continents: Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas were once closer to each other and were joined across today's Atlantic Ocean.
Subterranean water: There was a large amount of salty water in interconnected underground chambers, forming a continuous layer around the whole earth, in the form of a spherical shell. This was about 5/8 mile (1 km) thick, lay at a depth of 10 miles (16 km) under the earth's surface and contained about half of the water which is now in the oceans. The water contained dissolved minerals and gases, especially salt (NaCl) and carbon dioxide (CO₂). There was basaltic rock underneath this water, then the earth's mantle. At this time the features mentioned on the previous pages had not been formed yet.
Increasing pressure: The pressure was increasing in the subterranean water layer. This could have been caused by several things, for example the mantle's temperature could have been increasing due to radioactive decay, causing it to expand, therefore pressurizing the water above it.
In the following, we will see that the features described earlier are a direct result of these three assumptions. To make it simpler to understand, Walt Brown divided the events into 4 stages.

Events
Rupture Phase

Figure 7: The Rupture Phase of the Flood.

The increasing pressure in the subterranean water stretched the granite crust above, until it reached its failure point. At this moment, a crack appeared. The enormous stress at both ends of the crack enlarged it, and its two ends raced around the earth in opposite directions at about 2 miles per second (a characteristic of tensile cracks in rocks). Following the path of least resistance, the two ends circled the earth in a few hours, their paths meeting somewhere on the opposite side of the globe and intersecting each other in a "T" or "Y" shape. As the 10-mile deep crack opened up, the pressure in the subterranean chamber beneath the rupture dropped. The water exploded out of the ground with great speed into and above the atmosphere, spreading around the earth and producing raging rains, never seen before. The water rising above the atmosphere froze, and fell back to earth in the form of hail, which buried and froze many animals, including mammoths. This 46,000 miles long rupture was near today's Mid-Oceanic Ridge.
Flood Phase

Figure 8: The Flood Phase.

The water jetting out of the rupture eroded both sides of the crack. Eroded sediments were swept up in the water, making it thick and muddy. These sediments settled all over the earth's surface, burying most of the world's plants and animals. A phenomenon called liquefaction (see In the Beginning, pages 138—149 for details) sorted sediments, dead animals and plants into horizontal layers according to their densities, and the process of forming today's fossils began. Evolutionists believe this sorting is a result of macroevolution and the lower organisms lived millions of years before the upper organisms, the sediments being deposited very slowly. This belief of evolutionary geology is called the principle of superposition.
Before these events, today's major mountain ranges had not been formed yet. The water covered the whole earth, causing a global flood. As a part of the water's energy was converted into heat, the temperature of the escaping water increased by about 100°F (56°C) (see In the Beginning, page 218 for calculations). As a result of evaporation, the water became supersaturated in salt, and the salt precipitated into thick, pasty layers. These lighter layers were covered by denser layers of sediments, and the salt flowing upwards through the sediments formed the salt domes.
Lower pressure liquids can hold less dissolved gases than high pressure liquids. As the pressure of the water dropped, much gas came out of solution, mostly carbon dioxide. Calcium ions (from the basalt beneath) in the water and dissolved carbon dioxide gas precipitated into large amounts of limestone, CaCO₃ (see In the Beginning, technical note on page 219).
The flood uprooted vegetation, and the currents carried it to some areas where much of it accumulated. Some plants even drifted to the South Pole in the global flood. In the next, continental drift phase, these buried layers of plants were heated and compressed, creating today's coal and oil formations.

The hydroplate theory of Dr. Walt Brown continues (here) with descriptions of how the continents formed.

A matter of argumentation, or did you miss that in being hypertechnical and overly focused? I thought it obvious what I was getting at was quite simple and straight forward. Liquefaction studies are fairly new in regard to how serious they are taken. Just as the effect of Water saturation on volcanic domes is a fairly recent thing for them to get worked up about. Go back and look at early geology at the time these theories of strata dating methods were coming about and see how much discussion you can find on liquefaction. Truth is that Global catastrophies are only considered *if* there is no linkage to Christianity. The Scientific community by and large utterly rejects a Global flood and will not entertain discussion of the notion without dismissiveness as though it were some quack theory. That is what we call Bias. Though all the signs be there right under their noses. If it were a burned house we were examining, by comparison, Scientists would look for every other concieveable notion that might destroy a structure before relenting to the notion that wood being charred meant that there had been a fire. Geologists don't pay it much heed with regard to old strata.

In terms of this argument and time in general, that is ancient. And I'd argue that your 10 million years figure is arbitrary. You might as well say 20. It lends no proof to what you say. Strata is strata. It might make for interesting conversation; but, the idea that depth or placement relative to depth elsewhere means age is ludicrous unless you can prove continuity and absence of natural meddling or contamination. You can do none of these things. And furthermore, you can't fix any accurate dating. The only reason an Ancient earth is argued for is that it gives evolution time to play about and stack up happenstances one after another for which the odds against any one of them ever occuring is astronomical. to say nothing of the odds of all of it happening. The earth neither has to be very old or very young. It merely has to be what science can prove. And unfortunately, science has been more about creating theories based on bits and pieces rather than identifying facts and following where they lead. One is a waste of time and the other is good investigative technique. You don't go about solving a murder by stating that "the butler did it" then hypothesizing endlessly about the ways in which it might have happened. You do so by looking at the facts and admitting the wife did it, when the evidence leads you there, even if you suspect the butler. Science won't consider anything but the butler and won't follow where the evidence leads. If evolutionists were cops, you'd all be fired for lack of getting anything done and probably sued by the butler for impropriety.

You probably don't believe in plate tectonics either, though. Presumably earthquakes and volcanoes are acts of God, eh?

One doesn't need plates or plate tectonics to have earthquakes or volcanoes either one. I'm sure that statement bothers you; but, then you're being argumentative, so why shouldn't I. Volcanoes happen because a fisure in the strata exposes a path of least resistance through which magma flows upword as a relief of pressure off the core. Magma forms a mound that, over time, destablizes and together with saturation principles causes a restriction to the flow that has been enjoyed up to the point of criticality. Eruptions then occur. And tectonics have neither a place in the process nor is the notion even required for the process to happen. Quakes need only a fault in the strata combined with ground level saturation in order to happen. If plate tectonics were a reality, then why the striations on the ocean floor parallel to continental drift vectors? Right, they just appeared from no where or were formed by slow moving mud flows.. And I'm King of france.

You think there are no signs of eroded mountains in South Dakota and Montana? Have you ever been to either state?

And the pattern continues. Respond to something I haven't said as though astounded that I'd utter such a thing. Be astounded. I didn't utter it. Read.

We use carbon dating to get ages for dinosaurs. Sure.

No kidding.

So you say anyhow. Wait, see that, the world just stopped in anticipation of hearing how this is accomplished - actual proof for dating..

I can look at 9 million year old ash layers,

No, you can look at ash layers and theorize that they're 9 million years old. What you can prove is quite another thing or we would'nt keep running around in circles while you cite specific dates with nothing to back them up other than an underlying hypothesis.