From: Darryl Maddox
Now to my comments on the experiment on the rates of sedimentation.
You were off to a good start and sort of had the correct idea that more sediment of a given size should take longer to settle. However there are several differences between your experiment and reality which make your experiment pretty useless for providing data with which to argue against slow rates of deposition of fine grained sediments.
The first problem is that your sediment isn't in moving water. ... Consequently when we find clay, silts and fine sands in deposits whose sedimentary structures are known from lab experiments to be indicative of sedimentation from suspension rather than from dumping into more slowly moving water or from a rapid decrease in water velocity, the water that deposited them had to be going slower than the water which transports those sizes today - whether in flume studies or in the real world.
Can you point me in the right direction to publications on the experiments of sedimentary structure deposition environments?
Attached are three jpgs which taken together illustrate (but do not in themselve prove) my point that most of the sedimentological record must be ignored in order to justify the argument that most of the worlds sediment was deposited as a result of a universal high energy hydrologic event.
Bog1 is not really a bog but of a tributary to a small river SW of Houston Texas. I don't know how fast the water was moving but I do know the relief there is < 1-2 ft per mile and the waves height is on the order of a few inches or less so however fast it is moving it can't be moving very fast and the stream is full of sediment in suspension. The man who owns this land is in his 80's and is 3rd generation on the land and he said these channels are about like they have "always" been so there isn't much if any vertical accretion going on here.
One would not expect much vertical accretion unless the waters were over saturated after being at a higher energy state up stream. Ths stream has apparently reach equilibrium between the amount of soil it can carry and how much it carries. If it is not making sedimentary deposits it is not of much value in this discussion.
Cr1 is of the Canadian River just north of where I live in Amarillo Texas (more or less the center of the Texas Panhandle). This river regularly carries silt and fine sand in suspension while moving at velocities measurable in a few miles per hour - hardly tsunami, turbidite, or any other high energy velocities and yet is does not deposit its load of fine grained sediment. The only time active sedimentation occurs is after rains when the sediment eroded by the contributing creeks is dumped into the main channel or when the main channel velocity declines a day or so after each rain.
If this stream is not in the over-saturated state then of course it will not make deposits. The addition of extra sediment occasionally from contributing creeks puts it into the over-saturated state and sediment is deposited. This is what I've been saying. The question seems to be, are these deposits from the over-saturated state vastly different from supposed deposition from suspension? And since this stream apparently doesn't normally make depositions then wouldn't all depositions actually be from the over-saturated state?
Profile1 shows a couple of hudred feet of clay, silt and fine sand which comprise the upper poart of the Quartermaster Formation and Tecovas Formation at Sad Monkey Peak, Palo Duro Canyon, about 15 miles SE of Amarillo. ... These formations and sediments types extend about 100 miles in a north south direction and some 20 or so miles in an east west direction. Consequently we are dealing with about 2,000 square miles of sediment which is demostratably a low energy environemt.
Here is the issue, how are they demonstratable a low energy deposition. I want to see the data from which such an interpretation is demanded.
So right here within a short drive of my house I can show sediments which are by all young earth models not pre- or post-flood, which by both flume studies and by analogy to modern streams are low energy deposits and which no young earth model has yet to address specifically or even by type.
Just exactly what are the specifics which define these as low energy deposits? Particulate size cannot be a major factor because the same sizes can be deposited quickly under overstaration conditions (such as my jars).
And while I am on this subject, that sequence of yellow over brownish-marooon over mottled maroon and white appears to be directly analogous to the bauxitic soils now forming in the Amazon basin, right down to the vertical distribution of the leached, transported and re-precipitated metals, at least so far as I have been able to determine in a bit less than 7 months of very part time field and lab work. Is that enough to show that at least in some cases the present is in some cases the key to interpreting the past?
It is one thing to find AN interpretative model. It is another to claim it is THE interpretative model. I don't believe that enough research has been done yet because what has been done supports the current model and why look for anything else.
If now perhaps you will consider the correlation between the structures in the overlying Trujillio and those forming in modern braided streams and rivers and how those structures change in the down stream direction. If the Trujillio isn't a braided stream deposit that is a lot of coincidences to explain and if it is a braided stream deposit every young earth theory ever proposed goes right out the window. But since young earth proponents have yet to come up with a theory capable of explaining most of the significant physical aspects of the formations underlying or ovelying the the fomations I have discussed here that isn't an objection to their being accepted as good theories.
Creationary Catastrophists do indeed have much work to do. I anticipate more interesting work will be done.
A quick look at the fossils in the Quartermaster, the Tecovas and the Trujillio:
The Quartermaster is barren of fossils while the fossils found in the Tecovas and Trjuillio are small fish and amphibians, a few small reptiles, imprints of bits of plant matter (twigs and leaves), some pieces of carbon, and some petrified wood. But there are NO mammals, NO big ocean fish, and NO salt water corals, absolutely nothing to indicate any depositional environment other than swampy streams, bogs, lakes, etc. The abrupt change in fossil content between the formations as well as the absence of deep water forms is certainly not an example of inadequate sampling or lack of looking.
The Creationary Catastrophist model would not expect all depositions to be marine in origin. There is no reason why non-marine depositions cannot be made in areas of the continents where secondary forces (not impact-tsunami) move the waters around.
To summarize:
I said most of the geologic record with which I am familiar had to be ignored in order to believe in a young earth scenario. I have shown both physical and paleontological reasons I consider these theories inadequate. Have I made my point? Probably only to those who already believe in an old earth. I have found that proof, like truth and beauty, are more often in the eyes of the behold than in any quantitiatively defined aspect of the subject.
Rather, it is most of the interpretations of the geologic record of which you are familiar must be ignored to believe in a young earth scenario. If that interpretation is based on actualistic assumptions one cannot expect but for it to support an old earth concept. Just because an interpretation has been found that does not mean it is the only possible interpretation. I am certain catastrophic interpretation can be found, but you have to dispose of actualistic assumptions to do so.
For a variety of reasons I am curtailing my considerations of they young earth ideas as well as my writtings and discussions of them so don' t look for much if any rebuttal to any arguments presented in favor of one or more of the young earth arguments. I have spent the last 5 years considering them and my mind is closing toward them. It needed to be done and I did it but now the time has coming to move on to other things.
Too bad, you are giving up way too soon.
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