For all the discussion about catastrophic deposition I always wonder why all the discussion about overtly non-catastrophic deposition is ignored. My favorite example of non-catastrophic deposition is evaporite deposits. I have yet to find a creationist who is able to provide even a remotely plausible explanation of how alternating and/or massive evaporite layers can form under water.
All quotes taken from:
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Above the delicately layered salts of the Castile Formation lies the massive Salado Formation, consisting of about 600 meters worth of bedded halite and other salts. At its thickest, these Ochoan series salts together have a thickness of around 1300m, a lateral subsurface extent of 150,000km2, and a volume of about 65,000km2 (Blatt and Tracy, Petrology, p. 329)!
The only creationist explanation that I could find in the article and elsewhere online talks about underwater hydrothermal vents. They claim that the purity of certain evaporite deposits necessarily negates the possibility of formation via the classical model of alternating wet/dry climate conditions. The "fact" of this impurity suggests that these deposits were formed under water via the interaction of hot and cold sea water.
What this explanation ignores is that many evaporite deposits are not pure in the slightest. Many evaporite formations contain contaminants and are even part of alternating sedimentation layers necessarily incompatible with a hydrothermal origin.
This claim can be traced back to Sozansky (1973), who claimed that the (alleged) absence of pollen and/or planktonic tests in evaporite deposits argues against an evaporation model. However, it is now known, and has been known for decades, that many evaporite deposits do in fact contain "impurities" such as pollen, plankton, algae, fungi spores, volcanic ash layers, and so forth, which we would expect on the restricted-marine, basin-evaporation theory, but not what we would expect if these salts were somehow rapidly extruded underwater in a global flood.
For instance, the 2km+ thick Sedom Formation evaporites in the Dead Sea Basin are about 80% pure halite, with 20% gypsum, marl, chalk, dolomite and shale (Niemi et al., The Dead Sea: The Lake and its Setting, Oxford Monographs on Geology and Geophysics No. 36, p. 46). Significant amounts of pollen are also present in these evaporites as well. See also: Ulrich Jux, The Palynologic Age of Diapiric and Bedded Salt, Department of Conservation, Louisiana Geological
Survey, Geological Bulletin 38, October, 1961; Wilhelm Klaus, Utilization of Spores in Evaporite Studies, in Jon L. Rau and Louis F. Dellwig, editors, Third Symposium on Salt, Cleveland: The Northern Ohio Geological Society, Inc., 1970.
The Paradox Basin evaporites, mentioned earlier, in fact have many thin interbedded shale layers containing brachiopods, condonts, and plant remains (Duff et al., Cyclic Sedimentation, Developments in Sedimentology, no. 10: Elsevier Publishing, 1967, p. 204).
If that isn't enough, most evaporite deposits are not found near areas that evidence hydrothermal activity.
Most large evaporite deposits found in the geologic record, for example those in intracratonic basins like the km thick Paradox salts, the 11 separate salt beds in the Williston Basin, or the 800-2500m thick deposits in the Mediterranean Basin, are not associated with any hydrothermal deposits of iron, manganese and so on, or with hydrothermally altered rocks, or with stockworks, ore veins, or any other evidence of contemporaneous magmatic/hydrothermal activity. That such evidence has not been found in telling, since any event which could deposit large salts in a period of mere weeks or months would be a very high energy event.
Also, current hydrothermal systems are acting in a manner that does not support the formation of evaporites via hydrothermal reaction.
Hydrothermal systems operating today in the sea at mid-ocean ridges, or on the continents (for instance in the Yellowstone National Park) do not seem to be depositing any sodium chloride, much less thick, laterally extensive sheets of salts such as those found in the sedimentary record, although hydrothermal systems in the ocean are depositing iron, manganese, copper and zinc sulfates, oxides and silicates. Anhydrite (CaSO4) is present in hydrothermal chimneys, but not as deposits surrounding the chimneys. This is not surprising, given that the mantle does not seem to contain significant source amounts of sodium of other volatile elements for hydrothermal systems to extract in the first place. In fact, hydrothermal solutions appear to contain smaller amounts of Cl and Na (17,300 and 9931 ppm) than normal seawater (19,500 and 10,500 ppm) (The Ocean Basins: Their Structure and Evolution, Open University, 1988, p. 100).
More examples of how evaporite deposits are incompatible with a hydrothermal origin are listed at that link including how evaporite deposits are often associated with trace fossils of subarial environments.
So while all the cataclysmic stuff is going on over at Joggins Cliffs we have slow deposition happening in arid environments all over the place. It is one thing to show how one location's geologic history is that of quick burial and another to show that the rest of the geologic record can be explained by cataclysm. In particular, evaporite deposits among other slow forming sedimentary layers are utterly irreconcilable with a global flood.
Thanks,
By the way, for a fun second-term drinking game, chug a beer every time you hear the phrase, "...contentious but futile protest vote by democrats." By the time Jeb Bush is elected president you will be so wasted you wont even notice the war in Syria.
-- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show
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