It is an idea that keeps coming up. The most common form is the claim that plants aren't alive so it was alright to eat them before the fall, they didn't die because thee weren't alive. But it is also applied to insects and bacteria.
It is great. Thanks. Not sure where is mhess13 now, but I am glad.
To me, I look this matter deeper than just from the Biblical point of view. I believe it can also be argued from the biological point of view. In particular, when every scientist is crazy about searching alien life today, this issue becomes more relevant, even critical, to Christian.
mhess13 suggested human did not eat meat until after the Noah's Flood (Gen 9:3). I did not think about that verse, and I always assumed that Adam started to eat animals after the Fall. If so, what was Abel doing by raising bunch of sheep? Eat milk and cheese? And sell sheep to people who needs an offering? No wonder Cain was not favored. He should have known better and buy a sheep from his brother.
Where do you think clays come from?
There one major difference between standard geology and a global flood that should effect clay transport. In geology sediment bearing water flows down rivers into a shallow sea and anywhere it slows it deposits it sediment. In a global flood not only do you have a very rapid flow of water, you also have tides unbound by landmasses. In a shallow sea you will have tides washing back and forth gently. In a global flood the volume of sediment bearing water will keep getting pulled along by the tide getting faster and faster without any continents to stop them. If they were free to flow without any resistance, tides would travel the world in synch with the moon every 25 hours or about 1,600 km/h at the equator, fine for liquid helium but unrealistic for water. But tsunamis seem quite happy crossing deep water at about 800 km/h. Perhaps shernren can tell us a bit more about the physics, how much of this is the movement of a mass of water or a shock wave propegated by oscillating water molecules. Then again the tsunami is travelling through a mass of water that is otherwise fairly still, but with global tides, not only is our mass of sediment bearing water pulled forward, the water ahead of it will be pulled forward too as the tidal pull travels even faster around the world. So our muddy water is not going to hit a larger volume od still water and dissipate, the water ahead of it gets pulled out of the way. Each time the tide comes around the sediment bearing water gets faster and faster. Add to that mixing between the different layers and sediment will spread around the world.
I suppose it comes back to my old challenge, flood geology should be able to track the movement of all the currents of sediment bearing water around the world by looking at where the sediment settled. You should be able to study basement rock on one continent and find sediment particles from it around the world. A mass of sediment bearing rock shouldn't just stop in the middle of a flood and dump all its sediment, there should be a trail of its sediment in other strata it has passed over as it travels to its dumping ground. It should be like unravelling a giant golf ball. If it is a global flood that is.
And as you said flood is not a good way to make clays. It is a classic problem for a global flood. The flood has to be turbulent enough to wear down continents and transport sand, gravel and rocks; yet is is gentle enough for the fine silt to settle out as shale. You still have to keep transporting vast volumes of sediment bearing water into a region to lay down layers of rock kilometres thick, while at the same time the water itself has to be still and calm for the fine particles to settle out.
It amazed me by seeing you wrote so much about the sedimentology of the Flood. While I can not address your concerns with enough confidence (I never thought about factors like tide or tsunami. People do not think they are effective factors in sedimentary transportation today. they simply roll the sediments back and forth.), I do can say the following:
Clay comes from the chemical deterioration of rocks. It takes time and could not be made by simply pulverizing rocks. I do not know how are clays transported in today's ocean, even maps of clay distribution in oceanic sediments are available. And when I think about it more, I started to doubt whether Noah's Flood is able to make the (today's) ocean murky enough to kill all the fishes. Of course, I don't think the ocean was the same in Noah's time.
