yes this is arbitrary information
Yes, this is common knowledge, and found in any travelors quide to federal state parks etc. But I must say, I take exception to the red herring fallacy you have commited. In providing irrelevant material to the conclusion-(that this was not caused by a flood), you provide facts of irrelevancy (current erosional properties). Seconldy, No one so far has rejected the idea that these rock formations are igneous, nor that the sedimentary layers are currently being eroded by rain, wind, ice, snow, trees, chemical reactions from roots, etc. This again is a red herring fallacy (I believe, and) to distract the audience from the main issue. (the duration of erosion, as the main evidence for a cataclysmic rapid erosion, I.E global flood). See argumentum ad populum as well, as it may apply. Notice that many times in debates when a particular perspective has no contributing premises anymore, or supporting facts, they will resort to a certian amount of word fillers(time wasters.) In order to fill in the time gap during the debate, where they lack real factual support, or have exausted theirs. I am not saying that you ARE doing this. But it would seem so. You typically have used terminology not as a means of relaying true information, but as a means of commiting a fallacy of an appeal to authority of sorts. I do this too, but it is dishonest in debate. It is best to define terms implicitly and not as a result of showing off vocabulary to distinguish ones authority of lack of authority. Simply knowing terminology does not in fact prove ones authority. It may simply mean that one may like reading dictionaries in his spare time.
for lack of more time to explain let me quote a random article of no consequence just to bring this conversation up to par:
below from creationontheweb.com
Devils Tower is dated at
over 50 Ma and supposedly has been subjected to erosion
for millions of years. Why hasn't erosion reduced Devils
Tower down to a small igneous knob by now? There have
been millions of freeze-thaw cycles over the 50 million year
period in eastern Wyoming to loosen the rock. On the other
hand, if the igneous rock is so resistant, is there enough
talus at the base of Devils Tower to account for millions of
years of erosion, similar to what is seen on the Colorado
Plateau?
above from creationontheweb.com
http://creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/tj/j10_2/j10_2_258-278.pdf
in other words, for the millions of years of erosion history, there is very little evidence of "talus" or "fallen rock debris" at the base of the monument. The only possible answer to this is according to the national park pamphlet "the river carried them away". However I noticed that the slope of the ground going away from the monument is a 20% grade for about a thousand foot, falls off a short bluff then goes a few hundred more feet on relatively 0-5% grade before it hits the closest river access (more than 1200 feet horozontally from the rock fall area). Thats almost a quarter mile of rolling through trees, amongst which several hundred feet are zero grade!. Exhibit A: Notice in the pictures that the rocks of devils tower are all within a hundred feet or so of the base.
here is just one picture of the rock in question:
Google Image Result for http://www.ruralimagecoop.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Devils-Tower.jpg
It is relatively impossible for a rock to fly over trees on a 20% grade, down a bluff, pick of momentum to roll another 300-350 feet all on its own into a river, once again to be swept by the fierce waters down stream. Which is it's own absurd gesture that I will not get into.
I am suggesting the rocks will fall where they may, namely at the base of the monument, not 1300' removed. (I have a topo map of the area if you are interested in the amount of feet from the drop zone to the nearest river entrance.
Another innacuracy, you premise that no mesas, meander cores, and degradation remnants can be caused/due to a single flood is
Right off the cuff "steamboat rock" in washington is one mesa that was due to a single "flood event." I am sure there are more.
This would be another violation of fallacy (begging the question, i.e. fallacy of assumptions). Your argument quoted above "begs the question" since the single flood event mentioned is very subject in question.
here are some more informal fallacies of beggin the question: Of course they have nothing to do with our discussion but simply for a FYI
the below is a clip from answers in genesis: a trust worthy conservative site for intelligent design debate:
Creation cannot be true because you would have to ignore all that scientific evidence.
But this argument begs the question because it presupposes that scientific evidence somehow provides support for evolution, which has not been demonstrated.
It makes no sense to deny evolution; it is a well-established fact of nature.
This argument also begs the question since the truth status of evolution is the very question at issue.
Christians are not always above circular reasoning either. Some have argued,
The Bible must be the Word of God because it says it is. And what it says must be true, since God cannot lie.
Of course, it is quite true that the Bible does claim to be the Word of God, and it is also true that God does not lie. But when one of these statements is used as the sole support for the other, the argument commits the fallacy of begging the question. The same line of argumentation could be used to prove the Koran, which of course we would deny.
Now, its time to get a little philosophically deep. Brace yourself. Begging the question is a very strange fallacy because it is actually valid. Recall that a valid argument is one in which the conclusion does follow from the premises. Normally fallacies are not valid; the fact that their conclusion does not follow from the premise(s) is what makes them fallacies. But, oddly, with begging the question the conclusion does follow from the premise (because it is simply a restatement of the premise). So, the argument, Evolution must be true because it is a fact, is valid. But if it is valid, then why is it considered a fallacy?
The answer would seem to be that begging the question is a fallacy because it is arbitrary. Circular arguments of this kind are not useful because anyone who denies the conclusion would also deny the premise (since the conclusion is essentially the same as the premise). So, the argument, Evolution must be true because it is a fact, while technically valid, is fallacious because the arguer has merely assumed what he is trying to prove. Arbitrary assumptions are not to be used in logical reasoning because we could equally well assume the exact opposite. It would be just as legitimate to argue, Evolution cannot be true because it is false.
It should also be noted that there are certain special cases where circular reasoning is unavoidable and not necessarily fallacious. Remember that begging the question is not invalid; it is considered fallacious because it is arbitrary. But what if it were not arbitrary? There are some situations where the conclusion of an argument must be assumed at the outset, but is not arbitrary.2 Here is an example:
Without laws of logic, we could not make an argument.
We can make an argument.
Therefore, there must be laws of logic.
This argument is perfectly reasonable, and valid. But it is subtly circular. This argument is using a law of logic called modus tollens to prove that there are laws of logic. So, we have tacitly assumed what we are trying to prove. But it is absolutely unavoidable in this case. We must use laws of logic to prove anythingeven the existence of laws of logic.
However, the above argument is not arbitrary. We do have a good reason for assuming laws of logic, since without them we couldnt prove anything. And perhaps most significantly, anyone attempting to disprove the existence of laws of logic would have to first assume that laws of logic do exist in order to make the argument. He would refute himself.
Most of the examples of circular reasoning used by evolutionists are of the fallacious begging-the-question varietythey are arbitrary. Consider the evolutionist who argues:
The Bible cannot be correct because it says that stars were created in a single day; but we now know that it takes millions of years for stars to form.
By assuming that stars form over millions of years, the critic has taken for granted that they were not supernaturally created. He has tacitly assumed the Bible is wrong in his attempt to argue that the Bible is wrong; he has begged the question. Another example is:
We know evolution must have happened, because we are here!
This argument begs the question, since the way we got here is the very point in question.
Watch for arguments that subtly presume (in an arbitrary way) what the critic is attempting to prove. In particular, evolutionists will often take for granted the assumptions of naturalism, uniformitarianism, strict empiricism (the notion that all truth claims are answered by observation and experimentation), and sometimes evolution itself. But, of course, these are the very claims at issue. When an evolutionist takes these things for granted, he is not giving a good logical reason for his position; he is simply arbitrarily asserting his position."
above clip from:
Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy of Begging the Question - Answers in Genesis
or yet another fallacy: below from creationmoments.com
" A very common example of this comes in the form of, "There wasn't enough water in the Biblical Flood to cover all the mountains" or "Where did all the water go?"
What they are asserting is that there wasn't enough water to cover the present-day mountains. This is fallacious because they are presuming evolutionary time scales for the rates of the mountains forming that is, millions of years. This means that the mountains we have today would have been nearly identical in height just 4,500 years ago at the time of the Flood. This is begging the question because the premise of their argument assumes long ages are true in order to argue that long ages are true (and, thus, that the Flood could not have happened).
If, as creationists say, the mountains we have today formed rapidly, starting during the Flood, then there is no problem with the amount of water we have today covering the Earth. Thus, the Flood account only seems inconsistent if you don't use all of the Flood model's premises. Taken together, the Flood model explains consistently the evidence we have in the geologic record.
above clip from
LOGICAL FALLACIES OF EVOLUTION 101: BEGGING THE QUESTION | Creation Moments
