TheLiteralist writes:
* There was a global Flood that lasted about a year
* This Flood deposited soft sediments pretty much everywhere
Your second assumption is sediment being deposited globally. This would be a very good piece of evidence if the YECs could ever find the strata and correlate it. And since it happened only 4,000 years ago, it shouldn't be that hard.
Each continent should show at least a few massive flood related deposits composed of highly unsorted, extremely heterolithic assemblages with material ranging in size from perhaps cobbles (or may be too small) to huge boulders. In addition, the mega-conglomerate would likely be intermixed with the ripped and shredded remains of vegetation and various forms of life. These sorts of deposits should be easily seen as they would form highly anomalous, albeit localized, formations.
As the waters deepend, and lost energy, I would expect deposition of sediment to reflect this gradual loss of energy by forming an immense, laterally-continuous, fining-upwards sequence all over the planet - and that would likely include continental deposition in ocean basins. Here is another chance for YECs to find evidence in support of a large flood - continental material contaminating the world's ocean basins.
* Near the end of the Flood there was a shear event (i.e., the oceanic crust sheared from the continental crust sinking down forming a place to hold the Flood waters ~ in other words, the ocean basins formed)
As for this assumption, I'm having a hard time visualizing this shear event. What exactly is it? A sort of decoupling of sediments at the continental boundary?
You stated that oceanic crust sheared from the continents forming the ocean basins. So that means there were older oceanic basins prior to the flood and the shear event created new ones.
The only way I can wee you forming a 'new' basin is to somehow form voids below the ocean basins - sort of like limestone dissolution or maybe displacing all the magma below the surface. Otherwise, all you'd be doing by forming 'shears' and sliding rocks around on top of them is to slosh the water around by displacing it. You'd create some humongous tidal waves, but not ocean basins.
* The shear event, which was global, caused corresponding uplift in the continents (in various directions or axis) causing not only mountains to form but also major river vallies from which the Flood waters and the fresher, soft sediments generally ran off into the new basins and rapidly so.
Assuming this 'shear' event is possible, you need to think more about the geometry of the sheared 'plates,' how many of them sheared off, where they collided (plate/plate collisions in the ocean basins the - mid-ocean ridge perhaps? - plate/continent collision, etc.), and which mountain ranges (I'm assuming the youngest ones) plateaus were formed.
The problem is that any orogenic episode related to these sorts of events would probably form metamorphic cored mountain ranges at continental margins - like the coast ranges - not in the center. This theory would have to explain young mountain ranges like the Rockies located in the center of the North American continent or ranges like the Sierra that are cored by immense felsic plutons rather than metamorphic rock.
We would have to know what the physiography of the planet was prior to the flood also.
Now, with the assumptions out of the way...would the shear event have caused enough heat to soften the rock on both sides of the shear (particularly the thinner oceanic base rock) so that the quickly dumped sediments would indeed have depressed the soft rock along shear line?
Not all shear events result in heat formation. Well, maybe a little.
They'd likely have elevated temperatures, but I would expect all that cold water overlying the sediments, or the water-laden sediments to keep the rocks pretty darn cool. However, again assuming the shear did produce heat, you would expect to see recrystalization of minerals/rocks on both sides of the shear, but likely more pronounced, pervasive, and extensive metamorphism of the rocks above. The thickness of the rocks really isn't as important as the composition of the rocks themselves as far as alteration is concerned.
I'm not sure what you are trying to get at with the last part of your statement, however. You need to describe the geometry and location of the shear better.
I don't know how deep the Gulf of Mexico is, but the shear would have meant that oceanic base rock scrubbed continental base rock for at least that length. That seems in my mind to be a significant source of heat (probably someone says it would instantly vaporize the oceans or such...).
This description really doesn't make any sense at all. I don't understand how a shear is going to 'scrub' anything. Or how you're getting oceanic rock to 'scrub' continental rock.
™ Version 4.2
