Mike, I think your main problem is visualization.
Look at it this way. Rock hound has a localized stratigraphic section that shows 30 meters of layered mud containing ripples and fossils. The type of fossils along with the ripple marks suggests a shallow-marine environment. It might even be a lagoon or something(???).
In order to deposit 30 meters (~100 feet) of mud that contains ripples and fossils, you need time. You have to take into account the rate at which mud will settle in a dynamic/low-energy environment (e.g., as indicated by the ripples). The size of the ripples, probably no more than an inch high, indicates a mild current, which is not nearly the same as the current a flood would have.
Okay, we can imagine that the mud would have taken some time to settle out of the water. Certainly more than 40 days. Wouldn't you agree? Now, you have a problem, because both below AND above this 30 meters of green mudstone you have red sediments, meaning they were subjected to aerobic (oxygenated) conditions. These sediments consist of volcanic rocks/formations and also of fluvial (river) deposition.
First you have to erupt the lava. Have you witnessed many eruptions in your time? A few probably, but not many. An eruption could take many years. Secondly, evidence of river deposition is easily recognized by geologists. I'm sure you've seen many rivers in your lifetime. You would even be able to recognize where a river has been with all the water gone. I has certain features that are unmistakable: banks, sand bars, large rock accumulations, twists and turns, etc. Even if you bury this stuff you can tell.
So now, I think you can picture a place perhaps a little like the beaches in Mexico. It's arid, deserted, perhaps a few sand dunes and a volcano or two in the background, and maybe a lagoon down the beach and a small estuary or fluvial system emptying into the ocean. Out in the water, you start out in sand where the energy (water) is highest and it moves the sand back and forth and up and down the beach. Further out, the sand gets finer and maybe even turns to silt and mud. Sea life all over the place. Nice, huh?
Now imagine a sea level rise. This can be caused by either the subsidence of land, a rise in the eustatic sea level by melting ice, or thermal expansion (higher sea temperatures result in expansion of the water).
As the water rises, the pretty beach is soon covered with water. It is no longer exposed to oxygen, so the new sediments are not oxidized (they don't turn red). The higher the water gets, the further back UP the land the beach moves. At some point, the new beach is several hundred feet from where it started and if you stuck stick in the sand where the water once reached, it would now be underwater. Instead of sand, it might now be mud that was getting deposited. With changes in sea level you also get a migration of depositional environments (e.g., drop in sea levels usually means the beach will move toward the ocean).
The higher the water gets, the deeper that stick gets. It's possible that that stick could be so deep that it's getting buried by siliceous ooze instead of shale (deep DEEP ocean), carbonate, sand, etc. All this depostion takes time and it is impossible to get that same
order of sediments deposited in a flood.
Moving up the strat section at your stick, you start in sand, get into mud, limestone, shale, chert (siliceous ooze). Within those layers you have representative fossils for all the different marine environments.
The area Rock hound looked at has this terrestrial environment above and below the green water-lain deposits, so you have 3 separate time periods represented there: 2 subaerial and one subaqueous. The structures in the sediments and the forms they have are such that no flood could ever have deposited them. The amount of time required to deposit just this small little area, even if not millions of years, is certainly much longer than a flood year.
I imagine you're going to say something along the lines of, "but why can't the flood still have done this?" You go from land (pre-flood), to water (flood), to land (post-flood).
Well, Sure, but the section Rock Hound describes is only for this tiny little area in Ireland. You need to be able to trace that 30 meters of green mud a lot further out than just Ireland. It doesn't happen.
Not only that. If you look at your own geology, you would see hundreds to thousands of interlayered sediments that go from water-lain to subaerially-deposited. Which one is the flood? According to flood proponents, all the geologic column is flood related. However, they never get into explaining all the thousands of details that show us the sediments were deposited on land NOT underwater. They ignore the geology because it doesn't point to a large flood. It points to millions and billions of years.
Conversely, what do you think would happen to that happy little beach in Mexico during the largest deluge in history? Everything above ground would be washed into the ocean. All that fresh water would kill the sea life. The deposits would reflect the catastrophic nature of the flood. Large boulders, sand, dead organisms, vegetation, etc. all deposited together in a jumbled mass. You would not get nice little layers with delicate ripples.
Not one YEC can point to one single layer in the entire world and say "this one layer is found all over the world and is the result of a/the flood." Not ONE!! Does that make sense to you? The largest storm in the history of this planet leaves no record of itself? The fact that we have never experienced such a storm and therefore would not know what one looks like is simply ridiculous.
So the only way to get around this is either ignore it or say God created an old-looking earth.
Did that help??
[This message has been edited by roxrkool, 11-20-2003]
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