The Canyon That God Built?

[Slug Toy]

well we geologists (and i say WE because i am going to school for geology) sure as hell dont call it noah's flood. it wasnt a flood that made the grand canyon anyways. it was a river.

yes, water is a damn strong force, but only under certain circumstances. if you pressurize it, yes it can cut metal, but rivers dont flow at 500psi. the strongest force is something called cavitation which is basically air bubble bursting with tremedous force in waterfalls. this is what is acting on the bottom of the niagra falls. given time (time meaning many millenia at least because the geological time scale usually deals with millions of years) all this will cut a canyon, but a flood means nothing when you're dealing with large rivers. there are already huge amounts of water flowing though the grand canyon, and yet there are no visible changes from day to day. in fact its widely accepted that the grand canyon is about... 5 million years old based on the fossil records.

anyways this HAS kind of gotten away from what i was trying to say. i wasnt trying to turn this into a debate about religion or anything like that. i was trying to point out how stupid it is that the government is doing exactly what it is supposed to prevent in this case. i mean... the whole "accommodating creationists" argument aside, whats in the constitution? freedom of speech for one thing. at the very least this issue about the grand canyon is unconstitutional and im amazed that we havent seen a real **** storm about it yet.

<EDIT> you posted while i was typing, nil8. just so you know, ice can do some damage. ice is what formed the nice jagged mountains up here (like the rocky mountains). the only thing is that the grand canyon is sandstone so if a glacier came through there, everything would be wiped clean, no canyons.

[Zephik]

You cant prove science any more than you can prove god. There was a time when scientists believed the earth was flat. That was disproved, so can anything we NOW believe to be true.

You know, that is very true. So why can't we all just play nice? Do some people really believe that there is one way and only one way? Why? For me, I guess, I would say that the only thing that has truly been proven is that we are usually not entirely correct if not completely off. These people are supposed to be really smart right? So...idk? Isn't it true that we are usually, at the least, off in what we believe? Such as the world being flat for example...

[CanaBalistic]

My Final statement in this thread.

What gets us into trouble is not what we dont know.
It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.
-Mark Twain

[CanaBalistic]

Sorry for the double post. I know i said it was my last.

I thought what D_Stilgar said was a little odd. So i did some research.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human#Evolution

Anatomically modern humans appear in the fossil record in Africa about 130,000 years ago

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ice/chill.html

The most recent period of glaciation, which many people think of as the "Ice Age", was at its height approximately 20,000 years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_painting

The choice of subject matter can indicate date such as the reindeer at the Spanish cave of Cueva de las Monedas which imply the art is from the last Ice Age. The oldest cave is that of Chauvet, and is 32,000 years old.

There have been 7 ice ages in the last 650,000 years according to scientific studies of the antarctic ice sheets.

Obviously, that many freeze/thaw periods could erode enough material to form the grand canyon. Another thing to note is that evidence of thies changes would be more apparent to earlier civilizations. Which could predict an ice age melting resulting in a flood.

As for Noah:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v8/i1/noah.asp

According to the Bible (Genesis 6:15), the length of the Ark was 300 cubits, the breadth of it was 50 cubits, and the height of it was 30 cubits. A cubit is known to be the distance between a man’s elbow and finger-tip. To decide the actual size of the Ark, a cubit had to be defined in terms of a modern unit. Scott7 collected the existing data about cubits around the Middle East area, and we adopted the common cubit (1 cubit = 17.5 inches) to approximate the size of the Ark. In modern units, the Ark was approximately 135m long, 22.5m wide and 13.5m high.

The apparent size of the ship according to the bible doesnt have enough space for all the animals it supposedly was able to hold.

[nil8]

<EDIT> you posted while i was typing, nil8. just so you know, ice can do some damage. ice is what formed the nice jagged mountains up here (like the rocky mountains). the only thing is that the grand canyon is sandstone so if a glacier came through there, everything would be wiped clean, no canyons.

Ice sheets formed parts of the midwest US as well.At least that's what I was told in high school. If I remember correctly, almost all of Iowa was formed by a sliding ice sheet.

What I was trying to say without being specific is that under the sandstone is limestone and schist, which are much harder to remove with either water, ice or erosion. It's still a beautiful canyon.

About the water cutting rock, Slug is completely correct. You're talking about pressure that is unbelievable and insanely controlled. A firehose that release 300 gal/min feels like a steady stream of punches and can bruise. Water under controlled pressure is an amazing force, but a flood isn't that.

[d_stilgar]

My argument on the water was just a way of saying that water, in fact, can cut stone. Not that one flood cut the grand canyon.

I just watched a show on the science channel about the ark. At the end, a skeptical ship builder and engineer and zoologist reviewed one man's research and found that Noah's ark was possible.

On what I said about modern humans, I was wrong. Anatomically correct human remains have been found dating back to 130,000 years ago. I've been watching "Walking with Cavemen" a lot recently and must have gotten my dates mixed up. Still, the history of modern men (by which I mean written language, not cave paintings, and where we moved from a nomadic people to using agricultire) is still only about 12,000 years old. That is pretty short.

I am not trying to argue the validity of the book published. I've always been told that the grand canyon was formed over millions of years by a river and I still believe that. But I also do not like people saying that things areimpossible. We have barely surpassed 100 years of flight, lets not rip on someone for believing something different. On that, if you want to see something that I think is complete garbage, google "age of earth". I had a roomate who believed that the earth is only 6000 years old. I completely think that is bull, yet I do not know everything, and there is no way you will win that argument, so I let him be.

[CanaBalistic]

I was mearly correcting the facts. Not that it was aimed at you in peticular.

[d_stilgar]

I was mearly correcting the facts. Not that it was aimed at you in peticular.

No offense taken, and I admit when I'm wrong. I'm not going to be so proud to deny becoming smarter.

[nil8]

On what I said about modern humans, I was wrong. Anatomically correct human remains have been found dating back to 130,000 years ago. I've been watching "Walking with Cavemen" a lot recently and must have gotten my dates mixed up. Still, the history of modern men (by which I mean written language, not cave paintings, and where we moved from a nomadic people to using agricultire) is still only about 12,000 years old. That is pretty short.

I am not trying to argue the validity of the book published. I've always been told that the grand canyon was formed over millions of years by a river and I still believe that. But I also do not like people saying that things areimpossible. We have barely surpassed 100 years of flight, lets not rip on someone for believing something different. On that, if you want to see something that I think is complete garbage, google "age of earth". I had a roomate who believed that the earth is only 6000 years old. I completely think that is bull, yet I do not know everything, and there is no way you will win that argument, so I let him be.

Walking with Cavemen is a really good documentary. Interesting stuff.
Humanity in the scope of the Earth's existence is a very short period of time. Civilized existence is a speck of time.

Things can be impossible. If all our current data points towards something not being possible, and incoming data continues to reinforce this, then it's probably not possible. Until it is objectively proven that it occurred or is possible, then it is called impossible. An easy example is you can't break the Earth's gravity by jumping. No human being can jump with his legs and feet fast enough or far enough to break gravity. It's impossible.

As for the past century, we've had more advancement in the past 100 years than humans have ever experienced before. The one thing that is still dragging behind is social behaviors and judgments. There's a quote I like to use in this debate(I debate a lot), it's by Robert Heinlein,"One man's mysticism is another man's engineering. Supernatural is a null term."

As for the age of earth nonsense, Bill Hicks definitely nailed it. "Explain dinosaurs.... You think somewhere in the Bible it would have been ****ing mentioned it. And oh, Jesus and his disciples walked to Nazareth. And oh, the path was blocked by a Brontosaurus with a splinter in his paw and the disciples did run around and exclaim "Oh what a big ****in' lizard lord!". But Jesus was unafraid and removed the splinter from the Brontosaurus paw and the big lizard became his friend. And Jesus sent him to Scotland where he lived in a loch for, oh so many years, inviting thousands of Americans families..."

Yea, it's meant to be comedy. Best comedian ever.

I'm not trying to pick on you stilgar. You're entitled to your ideas, as I am mine. Just trying to share my thoughts on the matter. Admitting your wrong is a good thing and making mistakes is often the best teacher because you forget your mistakes less than your successes.

[DaveW]

Can someone just lock this before someone gets into a Religion vs science argurment

I tend to find that these things stay in the 'intelligent debate' category to be honest, i've never had to lock a thread for developing into a flame fest.

Keep it that way guys!

-Dave