Geological column is sometimes out of order (Talk.Origins)

Claim CD102:


 * Strata in the geological column are sometimes out of order. The mechanisms geophysicists use to account for them are problematic. Thrust faulting would have produced great amounts of debris, which geologists don't see; folding would require great forces which geophysicists have trouble accounting for.

Sources:
 * Whitcomb, J. C. and H. M. Morris, 1961. The Genesis Flood. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., pp. 180-211.
 * Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, p. 120.

CreationWiki response:

Here are some examples

The main significance of such locations is not as evidence against uniformitarianism but as evidence that the Flood did not need to lay down fossils in perfect agreement with the geologic column.

Qilian Shan is interesting since the upper stratum is over gravel. At first glance this would seem like a perfect example of an overthrust but the implication is that all of the underlying Pliocene and Pleistocene material is gravel. An overthrust would grind the rock at the contact point, not have two whole rock layers pushing one aside and going over the other. If the Pliocene and Pleistocene material were gravel to start with, both would have tended to be pushed aside. The top layer is partly broken up but that does not prove it is an overthrust. They seem to have been laid down together, with gravel under solid rock.

And creationists fully recognize the fact that there are folds and faults, and yes they do account for some examples, but not all. All this really shows is that uniformitarian geologists can explain it away, so the most it does is eliminate out-of-order fossils as evidence against the geologic column. They are still useful in showing that the order of fossils depicted by the geologic column is not absolute.

Nearly all of the above examples are horizontal. Furthermore, there is no reason why expansion cracks and ripple marks cannot occur at a significant angle. Expansion cracks can occur subsurface and particularly in flood geology it would be possible for ripples to form at an angle. So this conclusion is just a result of uniformitarian interpretation.

Talk.Origins clearly misunderstands what is meant by "have trouble accounting for." In many of these cases there is simply no evidence of a source for that constant pressure in the location in question. For example, there are rock layers in mountains with no adjacent rocks to apply the pressure. The intent is not to say that uniformitarian geology has no source for the forces needed in the general case, but that in specific cases there is no evidence as to how the force was applied.

The claim that rocks will deform gradually under millions of years of heat and constant pressure is an ad hoc explanation necessary to retain uniformitarianism, not something that has been observed.

Translation: Even where there is no evidence for an overthrust, uniformitarian geologists are free to assume there is one.

That's odd since several of the above examples have no evidence of being disturbed. Besides this statement is made with no support.

However under Talk.Origins' uniformitarian mindset, any out-of-order fossils probably would by definition be "greatly disturbed."