I'm not claiming they're wrong necessarily. I'm claiming you're wrong and that you haven't supported with facts your bizarre notions of the effect of gravity on a collection of particles.
Ergo, if you're a troll, you can just ignore everything of what I'm about to type. If you're interested in learning, read on. Else, if you're only interested in having someone tell you you're right, feel free to replace any of the text in my post with some physics that supports your world view.
Your problem is not one of complete ignorance. In fact, I would put your level of understanding of physics at the high school level. The problem is that you are making some of the most common errors in physical thought. These errors take months to correct in introductory physics classes in college. Specifically, you make 4 big errors:
- Failure to understand that all three of Newton's laws apply for all matter
- Failure to understand conservation of momentum
- Failure to understand conservation of energy
- Failure to understand reference frames
Earlier in this thread, you misquoted Newton's first law, stating that objects in motion will remain in motion until acted upon by an outside object. Actually, it's an outside force, and sometimes those forces are counterintuitive. Newton's third law similarly states that with every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If I push on a wall with 5 N of force, the wall will push back at me with a further 5 N. Similarly, if I push on a shopping cart with 5 N of force, the cart WILL ACTUALLY PUSH BACK WITH 5 N OF FORCE!!!! But the cart is moving! How is that possible? The answer lies in your 4th error, the reference frame of my hands on the shopping cart is not accelerating. My hands remain firmly on the shopping cart, but if I expand the reference frame to include the wheels and the ground, suddenly my system changes. Now the friction between the ground and the wheels imparts a force opposing my 5 N, and the net force balance causes the shopping cart to move if and only if the forces opposing my motion are less than 5 N. But that first reference frame we talked about? Still pushing back with 5 N.
Now, resist your urge to tell me that I'm wrong. You've made the same error that every single first year physics student in the history of the planet has made. Your reference frames are wrong, you've failed to correctly apply Newton's laws of motion, and your energy and momentum balances are out of kilter.
This "intact" vs. "rubble" error that you've made has an error. You correctly assert that a bowling ball will likely do more damage to the floor than shards of a bowling ball. But that's only true if the reference frame does not include any of the underlying structure. If we're only interested in the point where the bowling ball makes impact with the floor, the equations are very simple to determine if the floor will undergo a "bearing" failure because the imparted energy exceeds the capacity of the floor. But if we include the structure of the floor, we need to follow the load path to the ground, where the ground will apply the same force to the structure as the bowling ball applied to it.
Your problem is that you've take our bowling ball analogy and concluded that, because it only causes local failure, it's only capable of causing local failure, globally. You have to include the force from the ground, which will be equal and opposite to the force of the bowling ball. What's further, all of the kinetic energy imparted by the ball will have to be absorbed by the structure. That energy can be turned into heat, sound, light and it can be used to destroy the structure.
This is why mudslides, avalanches and falling rubble are indeed problems. I've seen a human being killed by 4 tons of gravel falling on his head. The gravel fell in an area probably 10 times bigger than him, but he still died.
